1. Google Custom Search

Google Custom Search creates a custom search engine for your website. You can tweak it to your heart’s content – it can search your entire website, parts of the website or even multiple websites specified by you! You can also connect your Adsense account to the ads displayed with the search results (free version). The paid version lets you remove ads completely (starting at $100 per year).

Google Custom Search

2. Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts is perhaps the best friend for web designers/developers looking to use non-standard fonts in their projects. This fonts’ directory lets you easily implement the CSS @font-face technique.

Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts are totally free and can be implemented within minutes. You can either use a plugin or an @import command at the top of the CSS file (and then simply use the font’s name in your stylesheet). For instance:

@import url(‘http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Sans’);

#body { font: normal normal normal 14px/20px ‘Droid Sans’, Arial, sans-serif; }

3. Google Adsense/AdWords

If you wish to have advertisements on your website, Google Adsense is the easiest way to start. There are many tutorials that let you get the most of Adsense, as well as numerous plugins that help you implement Adsense in WordPress.

Google AdWords

With AdWords, you can use the Keyword Search to see the trends in search for specific keywords.

4. Goo.gl URL Shortener

WordPress has its own version of URL shortener in the form of WP.me – and this feature has now been very well integrated in Jetpack. However, Google claims its URL shortener is one of a kind! Further more, Google has also released its own URL Shortener API. So if you don’t already use it, it is time you started doing so. To get started, here is an excellent tutorial by Konstantin Kovshenin to help you get started with its integration in WordPress. If you do not wish to code yourself, there are many plugins out there to help you.

Google URL Shortener

5. Feedburner

Who doesn’t know Feedburner? It is a great tool that lets you track your website’s progress, number of subscribers, manage RSS and email subscriptions, apart from setting up and tweaking your blog’s feeds.

Google Feedburner

6. Google Analytics

Everyone uses Analytics – well, almost! Analytics is a wonderful tool when it comes to tracking the progress of your websites, clicks, advertisements, referrers and other related information. You can target specific sections and see what portions of your website are more popular than the rest. For WordPress users, Definitive WordPress Analytics by Joost de Valk is perhaps the most popular plugin for Analytics. If you are not familiar with Analytics, you should consider tutorials by KISSmetrics.

Google Analytics

7. Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer lets you perform experiments to see what works best for your website and how you can boost its performance. In other words, it can be useful in ‘split-testing’ your website.

It is, however, fairly advanced in its operation and if you are looking for a simpler alternative, you should consider the MaxA/B WordPress plugin.

8. Google Libraries API

Google Libraries API contains code frameworks which can be used on many platforms, including WordPress. While the truth behind this claim is anyone’s guess, it is often said that the Google Libraries’ framework is faster than the one that comes packaged with WordPress itself. The easiest way to integrate Google Libraries’ framework is using a plugin, but just in case you are adventurous, you can code it manually along the following lines (I’d personally suggest you use this method in custom extensions/plugins preferably):

<?php

wp_deregister_script(‘jquery’);

wp_register_script(‘jquery’, ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js’);

wp_enqueue_script(‘query’);

?>

Code Credit: Frederick Townes

Google Libraries API currently supports Chrome Frame, Dojo, Ext Core, jQuery, jQuery UI, MooTools, Prototype, script.aculo.us, SWFObject, Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), and WebFont Loader. You can check its developer guide here.

9. Google Chrome Developer Tools

Google Chrome now accounts for nearly 10% of total browser usage. It comes with its own set of Developer Tools, which is comparable to Firefox’s Firebug. Owing to the browser’s ever-increasing popularity, the extensions offered in Chrome DT are also on the rise.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nOEw9iiopwI

10. Google Project Hosting

Google Project Hosting lets you maintain a project online. It is similar to Github in its mode of operation. You can host projects up to 2 GB in size for free, and it also offers you many features such as subversion, project wikis and issue tracking. From a WordPress user’s perspective, many heavy-weight projects such as Thematic are listed.

Google Project Hosting

11. Google Checkout

Google Checkout is a service similar to Paypal. The best thing about Checkout is its excellent integration with many Google services, such as Adsense and AdWords. On the downside, however, it is not yet available in many countries.

Nevertheless, integrating Google Checkout as an alternative payment solution along side Paypal doesn’t seem to be a bad decision. For WP users, there are many plugins that can help you integrate Google Checkout in your website, such as Simple Google Checkout and LBAK Google Checkout.

12. Google Docs and Chart Tools

Google Docs is a web-based Office suite that lets you edit, create and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. You can even live-edit documents with multiple users.

Google Docs

Google Docs can be embedded into WordPress too, if you so desire.

Along similar lines, Google Chart Tools let you create interactive charts for your blog.

13. Google Maps

The benefits of Google Maps are not unknown to anyone. You can integrate Google Maps on your blog using multiple plugins, of which the most popular one is MapPress, that lets you integrate Maps on your WP site in an easy manner.

Google Maps

14. YouTube

YouTube is another extremely popular Google service that lets users upload and share videos. From your blog’s perspective, you can easily upload the bulky videos on YouTube and save a considerable amount of bandwidth. With the advent of HTML5, integrating a YouTube video in WordPress is a matter of minutes using embeds – simply enter the URL of the video in a fresh line, and you’re good to go!

However, if you wish to have total control over the embedded video, you may consider using plugins such as TubePress or Viper’s Video Quicktags.

15. Google Reader

Google Reader is a free web-based RSS feed tool. If you wish to blog about stuff from your RSS reading pane, you can add a ‘Send to’ button for your WordPress blog (by default, such mechanism exists for Facebook, Twitter and few other sites, but a WP-powered blog).

Google Reader

You might be tempted to use WordPress’s ‘Press This’ function in Reader too, but sadly, that is not possible because Press This is javascript and Reader will need a full-fledged URL.

In such a case, we will need to post directly to press-this.php

To do so, navigate to ‘Send To’ tab under Settings in Google Reader, and click ‘Create a custom link’. In the URL field, enter the URL to your website, along the following lines:

http://www.sample-website.com/wp-admin/press-this.php?u=${url}&t=${title}&s=${source}&v=2

Make sure you substitute ‘sample-website’ in the above snippet with the URL of your site.

16. Google Summer of Code

While this is not an extension or an app, Summer of Code offers a wonderful opportunity for young talents to, well, do awesome stuff! WordPress has been a regular participant since 2007, and you can check about its progress on the codex.

To Sum it Up…

As we have seen, Google offers many services (don’t forget GMail) that can be employed to boost our WordPress blogs. Which of these do you use/do not use? Do let me know in the comments!

Again Graphicriver is the answer. With just over 2000 backgrounds in sales you can be sure you’ll find the right one just for your needs. In this article we’ve compiled various backgrounds ranging from subtle textures and patterns to abstract desktop wallpapers to splendid lighting effects. Large part of these background are print-ready so you can use them in almost any way you can think of. Continue reading and check out these 60 useful and neat premium background from Graphicriver.

1. 101 Web 2.0 Backgrounds ($5)

Pack include 101 nice and clean web 2.0 style backgrounds for you site templates. 101 Jpegs + 1 PSD with all groups, organized layers, easy to change gradients, size. 150×800.

2. Wavy Abstract Background ($3)

This is a background in 6 different colors. The files are at height resolution and you can use it anywhere you like. There is a PSD file included so you can change the colors very easy.

3. Light Trails ($4)

5 unique and fully flexible light trails with 3 different colour variations per trail and 2 examples of how these light trails can be added to your graphics.

4. Extremium Lights ($2)

Modern backgrounds pack contain fuly customizable backgrounds, 1800×1000 resolution, fully layered PSD file, 7 background colors. Ready to be used for any web. project or aplication.

5. Lighting Backgrounds V2 ($3)

Lighting backgrounds, especially suited for use in web pages, twitter pages, or any type of project. The way these BG are made it, can enlarge them without losing quality. Changing colors is very easy, you can make the color combination that you like.

6. Backgrounds Web Kit ($4)

This file was created for every web designer that wants to work less when designing a web site, plus it can help you build an big number of web backgrounds.

7. Carbon Fiber Backgrounds ($9)

A collection of 20 exclusive background of carbon fiber, ready for the web.

8. Torn Paper Backgrounds ($3)

You can find included in the package 5 .PSD files (all the themes are separated in a diferent file) and 5 high resolution .JPG’s. CMYK, 300 DPI.

9. Space Web Backgrounds ($4)

Backgrounds especially for use in web pages, twitter pages, or any type of project. The way these BG are made it, can enlarge them without losing quality. Changing colors is very easy, you can make the color combination that you like.

10. ScratchBG ($2)

A collection of modern style grunge backgrounds, suitable for use on websites, banners, posters & more.

11. Venera Night Sky ($3)

Venera Night Sky is abstract background and you can use it anywhere you like. There is a PSD file included so you can make change very easy.

12. Infinite White Floor Spotlight ($5)

Six modern High resolution Web backgrounds 3000×1875 px 72dpi. Modern and fresh design great for faking a spotlight and photographic ambient.

13. Stylish Mosaic ($2)

Come’s complete with 7 pre-set color versions for you with an easy to change background to create your own variations.

14. WORN PSD Background ($2)

A set of six distressed PSD backgrounds in earth tones for you to use in your designs

15. Awesome web 2.0 incorporated clouds ($3)

Massive, beautiful and peaceful cloud background. Works great as a website background, artwork background, print, anything. Massive resolution of 3508×2480 at 300 dpi.

16. Shape Shift Background ($3)

Included is a full layered PSD file and 7 different colored JPG images. 3000x2250px.

17. Silk Light Abstract Background ($2)

4 color variations. Hi-res resolution. There is a PSD file included so you can change the colors.

18. 60 Retro Stripe Grunge Backgrounds ($2)

This set includes 60 retro stripe textured backgrounds for your design projects. Use them however you like to give your projects a professional look and feel. 1600x1200px.

19. Abstract Background ($2)

Beautiful backgrounds that are great for desktop wallpaper, web background, mobile phone wallpaper, etc. 3300x2550px, 300 DPI.

20. Beautiful Floating Islands Scene ($6)

Floating Islands Scene v1 is a page background that can be broken up into many segments and re-arranged completely for a unique look. Ready to go right out of the box. 3000x1230px.

21. Paper Backgrounds ($3)

Photorealistic pack contain 4 jpegs good quality and 1 PSD to change color and to edit structure of backgrounds. This backgrounds good for templates, blogs and other your stuff. 2700×2072 res. 300 dpi.

22. Vintage Wallpaper ($4)

Included in the zip file you will find a psd file that contains the illustration and an ai file that is the wallpaper pattern in vector format so you can use it in any way you wish.

23. Studio Backdrops ($3)

Simulate a realistic studio photo shoot with this 7 backdrops/backgrounds. Great to showcase your products, images, posters, webpages or any type of work. It can also be used for web backgrounds. 4000×2500 px 72dpi.

24. Grunge Old Paper ($2)

High resolution –  2827×4000px, layered PSD file where you can adjust the intensity of the texture and/or the intensity of the dark edges, 2 JPEG files saved from the PSD, optional torn edges.

25. Vintage Tileable Wallpaper Pack ($11)

Inside the zip file you will find a full set of individual jpg files of all the tiles for tileable backgrounds for your websites or whatever use you see fit and  a photoshop pattern file which you can load into your photoshop from the preset manager and use them as pattern fills.

26. World Map ($4)

This is clean layered psd world map classic black / white and lined version included. 4500x3000px.

27. Retro Rays Background ($2)

12 colors, high-resolution & quality backgrounds – 2400×1680px.

28. Premium Vintage Backgrounds ($5)

Classic look with an awesome style to use in any design project, website backgrounds, twitter accounts, desktop wallpapers, blogs, etc.

29. Abstract Waves In Colors ($3)

Abstract Waves In Colors #2 is abstract background at hi-res. There is a PSD file included so you can change the color very easy. 4000×3000, 300 DPI.

30. light & bokeh backgrounds ($4)

8 amazing colored backgrounds. Very nice light and bokeh effects. 2 styles (with & without lite noise effect).

31. Metal Backgrounds ($4)

6 Metal backgrounds, 1024×768, jpeg.

32. Massive Abstract Backgrounds ($3)

Massive Abstract Backgrounds 4 Light Effects. 3 Style of Background (Bokeh,Clean,Dust) 8 colors each. 2560x1600px.

33. Underwater Backgrounds ($2)

Clean underwater backgrounds at 2 variations, 4 colors, 2560×1600 res, 300 dpi. PSD included and well organized.

34. Retro Paper background ($2)

Retro Paper background. Full HD resolution (1920×1080px). Background to use in your web design projects andor as your desktop background. Pattern included (200×200px).

35. Faux Leather Textures ($7)

A collection of 5 faux leather textures perfect for backgrounds, 3D modeling and design projects. Images are all in JPG format sized 3000px x 2000px. Each graphic/texture has been rendered separately, meaning that each texture is unique.

36. 6 Darken Wood Backgrounds ($3)

6 HQ Wood Backgrounds, 2000×1500 px

37. Halloween Night ($3)

Scary Pumpkin within a graveyard. Background for designs.2524×3774px.

38. Linen ($2)

2560x1600px, PSD file included, easily changeable colors and saturation.

39. Abstract color waves ($5)

Abstract color waves that can be used for a website, presentation or print. Clean colors, well-organized and easy to edit. 2000x1500px, 300 DPI.

40. Plume Background ($3)

Layered PSD file – 3000×2250px, 72dpi, 5 color variation backgrounds included.

41. Backgrounds Pro 2012 Bundle ($5)

This file is a Bundle/Collection of 22 different professional backgrounds. These backgrounds come in handy when designing different stage environments to display products, photos and text. 3000x2500px, 300 DPI.

42. Fresh Grass Meadow and Tree ($3)

A fresh summer morning with mist and a solo tree.

43. Explosive Background ($4)

Full layered PSD File and 7 different colored jpg images. 3000×2250px.

44. Hi-res Textured Background ($2)

really textured and detailed. comes in 8 different colors. 2500x2000px.

45. Abstract Aurora Backgrounds ($4)

Abstract Aurora Backgrounds. 5 Backgrounds, 3 colors each, 15 variations. Use for print, web or design. 2500x1600px.

46. Background 5A ($2)

Ultra-high quality backgrounds that are great for desktop wallpaper, web background, mobile phone wallpaper, etc. 2 fully editable PSD files, 2400x2000px, 300 DPI.

47. Interior Backgrounds ($4)

Simulate a realistic studio photo shoot with these 18 background possibilities (3 clean interiors and 5 light set-ups). Great to showcase your products, images, posters, webpages or any type of work. It can also be used for web backgrounds. 4000×2500 px 72 dpi.

48. Paper Holes ($3)

4 Paper Hole Backgrounds. Including PSD and JPEG at 3072×2304.

49. Denim Background / Texture ($2)

PSD File Included in 2560×1600 resolution, customizable colors, customizable patterns and effects.

50. Hill and villages ($5)

Hill and villages with beautiful landscape. PSD included, 300 DPI.

51. Jute Wrap ($2)

Available for several common resolutions including i-devices, psd included for easy customizations, change color in one go.

52. 10 Retro Graphic Backgrounds ($3)

10 colored high-resolution & quality backgrounds with halftone elements. 3200×2267px, layered.

53. Vintage Floral backgrounds ($3)

Vintage Floral backgrounds in 6 colors 2448×3264px.

54. Subtle Wallpaper ($2)

5 JPEG with different color variations, layered .PSD file, 1920x1080px.

55. Stripes Vintage Background ($2)

Looks awesome for product presentation, 4 colors, various resolutions up to 2560×1920px.

56. Fabric Backgrounds ($2)

A palpable background resource for your premium websites or any graphics project.

57. Urban Backgrounds ($3)

1200×720px, 300dpi.

58. Geometric Grunge Pattern ($2)

A set of geometric pattern backgrounds with grunge effect (not tileable). Layered PSD file, 4167×2917px, layered vector geometric pattern included.

59. Patterned Paper Set ($3)

A set of high quality patterned papers. Ideal for use in backgrounds, designs, presentations, wallpapers etc. 3000x2300px.

60. Worn-out Carbon Background ($3)

The file can be transformed into clean carbon by hiding the “dirt” layer. Layered PSD, 2560×1440px.

1. Great Business Card Mock-up Pack ($6)

Best way to present your business card in 4 fancy & different styles. All you have to do is copy and paste. Your flat graphic files magically turn into 3D (print simulation) with impressive angles and lighting. Best for print preview and advertising.

2. 3D Asymmetrical Web Page Display ($3)

Perfect for displaying templates, web pages, photos etc. Each image is a smart object so editing the images is super easy. No need to worry about placements and reflections, it’s all done automatically.

3. 5 Realistic Logo Mockups ($6)

Create a realistic display for your logo in few seconds. These PSD files uses the Smart-Object feature, so you can replace the mockup content easily and quickly.

4. Mega Pack WEB Mock-Up 3 ($5)

This innovative package mock-ups is especially designed to show your web sites. in an elegant and attractive way, giving such a unique and real.

5. 3 Fold Brochure III ($6)

A design that breaks the traditional tri-fold design for brochures, giving a truly modern and original style all your ideas. 11×8,5.

6. Magazine Mockups – Closely Version ($5)

Magazine Mockups – Closely Version is a file, specially designed to create presentations of magazines designs, wanting to show these amazing designs an elegant, sophisticated and beautiful way.

7. Tee Mockup ($6)

This t-shirt mock-up file can be easily used and opened in Adobe Photoshop CS or higher. Place any image/logo or whatever on the mock-up, and place it on your website or shop.

8. Smart 3D package box ($4)

Elegant 3D box elements that will enhance your graphic and web projects alike to make it further visually appealing. The boxes are Smart Objects that requires jus placing your image and the box will be updated automatically.

9. Poster Mock-up Templates ($4)

4 psd template files with 3 different poster sizes. Very easy to modify. All you have to do is copy and paste your image.

10. Sleek Screen Mockup ($5)

Layered PSD file of a sleek display in 16:9. The file comes with four different screen resolutions to choose from.

11. Sleek Phone Mockup ($6)

Layered PSD file of a sleek phone. The file comes with two different screen resolutions to choose from on three different groups of phones and 8 single phone layouts.

12. Corporate Design Mock-ups ($11)

A spectacular mock-ups collection unprecedented, with photo-realistic effects and high-definition, Designed especially for presenting branding on different promotional pieces.

13. Sleek Laptop Mockup ($6)

Pixel-perfect image that are perfect to show of your latest wallpaper or homepage layout. Works with any background.

14. Album Cover CD Mock-Ups ($3)

Display your album cover design with these mock-up files. Simple to use with just a copy and past to edit both the cover art and background textures. Jewel case and digipack mock-ups included.

15. Set of 2 billboards ($4)

This is a set of two isolated billboards, with interchangeable backgrounds (3 included), smart objects for one-click editing and effects for a realistic photography look.

16. Mobilisimo Mobile Phone & Mobile Pad Mock-ups ($9)

Perfect to show your latest wallpaper, website or app. Works with any background.

17. Hands on tablet ($3)

4 hands templates which are holding the tablet, which can be easily applied with your application screenshot. The hands are the different layer, so you can move, rotate, combine them, or anything that gets on your mind.

18. Mega pack Brochure ($7)

This innovative package mock-ups is especially designed to show your creations in brochures or three-fold. in an elegant and attractive way, giving such a unique and real, let your works be seen truly spectacular.

19. Shopping bag mockup ($4)

Give your graphic creations another look by testing in real objects the design details which cannot be visualized from the initial drawings and sketches.

20. Bottles and Ice cool Mock-Up ($5)

This very useful graphic template is a great showcase for drinks, cocktails, toothpaste and every product that needs to be showed on a frosty cool scenery.

21. Stand Display Mockup ($5)

This PSD item uses the Smart-Object feature, so you can replace mockup’s content easily and quickly. The item includes a view from three different angles for optimal display.

22. 3D Google Map Mock-up ($5)

Quickly illustrate a stylish 3D arrival map mockup. Place your own map or a Google map. You can add any background or use transparent one.

23. Business card mockup display ($4)

You can use this file to display the front and back of your card or to show 2 different cards together. The PSD file uses the Smart-Object feature, so you can replace mock-up content easily and quickly.

24. AutoFrame ($2)

This item automatically generates a frame of your image without action. Just edit and save the smart object. Frames can be resized.

25. Paint Can ($4)

Layered PSD file of an paint can that uses Smart Objects to create the labels so they can be created in separate files.

26. Computer & Monitor Set ($4)

All items are in resolution 2400×1680px and highest quality. Everything is able to change (color, resizeable shapes).

27. Trade Show Boot Mock-up ($6)

Fully editable Booth PSD file. To generate your own Booth replace and adjust the corresponding Layers.

28. PRO 3d Web Showcase ($6)

Best for your web designs, pictures, artwork, portfolio etc. Full layered Photoshop .PSD Files (5 styles)

29. Professional Cap Mock-up ($4)

Quickly illustrate A cap mock up. You can add any background, edit 3 areas of colors, add a pattern, image, or a design of your own.

30. Splash Bundle ($6)

This awesome bundle contains 4 different juicy splashes with 4 different materials of which is: water, blood, milk & chocolate. It’s all high quality 3d rendered and fine tuned in Photoshop.

31. Paper Mock-Up (44)

If you design a page and want to show or want to see how he could now printed in a magazine or book, this mock-up is perfect for presentation.

32. The Store Maker ($7)

All elements have a very detailed design and they are all editable. All layers are named and well-organized.

33. Pixel Screen Mock-up ($6)

Ultra realistic LCD pixel screen mock-ups. A unique way to display your images.

34. Premium Product Presentation ($5)

Premium product presentation can be used for any of your website project for showcasing your website,products etc. Full layered,named and editable.

35. Chocolate/Candy Bar Mock-Up ($4)

The file you get is set up at 3222×1812px, preview ready.

36. 3D Box Mockup ($4)

6 Variations, Smart Layers, easily editable, 2560×1600px.

37. All-Star Shoes Mock-up ($4)

Quickly illustrate a shoes mock-up. You can add any background, choose the shoes color, place your own pattern design.

38. Piecemaker Mock-up (#3)

All elements have a very detailed design and they are all vector shapes (even shadows). Double-click easy image change (change one image and all pieces are updated).

39. Professional Trifold Brochure Mock-Up ($3)

Display your brochure design with this professional mock-up file. Simple and easy to use with smart-object feature and hue/saturation adjustment to change background color.

40. Cosmetic Packaging Mock Ups ($3)

Layered PSD files of beauty hand cream mock ups. Add some flair to your designs with these editable files.

41. Creative Book Shelves Including Icons ($7)

Uber high quality objects with insane amount of details arranged as shelf stuff. Design agency, photographer, travel company or any private blog can use this illustrations for about page design.

42. Food-Bag Product Mock-Up ($3)

Simple and easy to edit graphic food-bag mock-up with smart objects for one-click editing.

43. Grungy Crumpled Paper Mock-up ($5)

11 Grungy crumpled paper mock-up psd templates. It’s easy to edit. It is perfect for your product showcase, for your unique gallery, for print or any other awesome project.

44. Vinyl Records ($3)

A set of cool Vinyl Records for your project fully editable PSD build in vector layers.

45. Red Wine Bottles and Grapes ($6)

This mock-up consists of one bottle in two states: brand new and from the cellar – old and decayed. The bottle is very layered and each layer is vector smart object, so the whole thing is scalable.

46. Food Packaging Mock-Up ($4)

Simple and easy to edit graphic food packaging mock-up with smart objects for one-click editing.

47. Paper Bag Mock-Up ($8)

High resolution 2000×1500. Easily editable via smart object (automatically transforms two-dimensional images into realistic three-dimensional previews).

48. T-Shirt Mock ups ($5)

Best professional t-Shirt mockup pack to present your t-Shirt design and organize your online store. Changeable shirt color and background.

49. Textures Business Card Mock-up ($5)

1000×750px, 3 Styles.

50. Pie Chart Creator ($4)

Quickly illustrate a stylish 3D pie chart mock-up. Generate graphs within minutes, change the segments size as you wish x4 shaded graph styles, x8 different colors You can add any background or use transparent one.

Brushes

1. Brusheezy

Brusheezy is the place to share your free Photoshop brushes and other Photoshop related resources. Here you can explore and discuss the creations of other artists from around the world, or just find that perfect little freebie for your next Photoshop project. Brusheezy makes it easy to explore thousands of resources created by artists from all over the globe.

2. PS Brushes

PS Brushes is another place where Photoshop brushes are gathered. With weekly brush updates this site is a place you should definitely check out if you’re looking for fresh and neat brushes.

3. Brush Lovers

BrushLovers has one of the largest collections of exclusive and high-quality Photoshop brushes on the Web. They feature hundreds of Photoshop brushes that are free for both personal and commercial use. You won’t find this collection anywhere else.

Patterns

1. Colour Lovers

COLOURlovers is an international community of designers and artists of all kinds who visit the site to get color inspiration, ideas and feedback for both their professional and personal projects. In the ColourLovers pattern section you’ll find over 1,410,989 user-created seamless patterns to use in your creative projects.

2. Squid Fingers

At Squid Fingers you can find over 100 creative patterns to use for your projects. They come as GIFs and are free to use.

3. BG Patterns

BgPatterns is a tiny web app for making background patterns in a few clicks. It was created mostly for fun and was an experiment by Sergii Iavorskyi.

4. Background Labs

Background Labs feature a wide variety of Photoshop backgrounds, patterns, textures and graphics for use in customizing your Twitter profile, blogs and websites. Browse by color, by tags and styles. It can’t get any simpler to find graphics than on Background Labs!

Textures

1. CG Textures

CGTextures strives to be the world’s best texture site. It can be quite difficult to create textures without good photo materials. Making textures should be about creativity, not about frustrating hours looking for images on the Internet. By supplying good quality textures in an organized manner, CG Textures makes your everyday work easier and more enjoyable.

2. Texture King

Texture King is a resource for free stock textures. Currently the site has over 300 textures in 16 categories.

3. Lost & Taken

Lost and Taken was created over two and a half years ago with one intention: to helps designers by giving away the best free textures available. To this day, Lost and Taken textures have been viewed tens of millions of times and has helped thousands of designers accomplish their jobs a little easier and with more beautiful results.

4. Mayang’s Free Textures

Mayang’s texture library has over 3800 free to download, high-resolution textures. The reason I included this site is because here you can find a lot of unseen and different kinds of textures you won’t find anywhere else.

5. Texture Lovers

The purpose of Texture Lovers is to archive some of the best free textures from around the web, and better yet, only archive the ones that are free to use in commercial and personal work without worrying about giving credit to the source (no attribution).

Stock photos

1.Stoxk.xchng

Sxc.hu is the world’s best free stock site. SXC was launched in February 2001 as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work. The site has evolved into the massive community you see today — there are over 2,500,000 registered users and around 400,000 photos online.

2.Everystockphoto

Everystockphoto is a license-specific photo search engine. Currently they index and search millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and present them in an integrated search. It’s usually my second choice if I can’t find what I’m looking for in sxc.

3.Morguefile

Morguefile is the third largest free stock photo site. The Morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for illustrators, comic book artist, designers, teachers and all creative pursuits.

Icons

1. IconFinder

Iconfinder provides high quality icons for web designers and developers in an easy and efficient way. The site launched in 2007 as the first search engine focused on icons.

2. FindIcons

FindIcons is an icon search engine helps you find free icons. They have the largest searchable free icons database in the world and both a sophisticated search filtering and result matching system make it possible for you to get an icon you need for every design task.

Fonts

1. Dafont

Dafont is the largest free font library on the web. Nearly all free fonts make their way onto dafont and it’s definitely the first place to check if looking for qualitative fonts for your projects.

2. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is your best resource for free, hand-picked, high-quality, commercial-use fonts. Even if that means they send you elsewhere to get them.

Cheat Sheets

1. The Photoshop CS5 How To Geek Cheat Sheet

The Photoshop CS5 Cheat Sheet is a great tool for all Photoshop users, with keyboard shortcuts, graphs and graphics not only good for CS5, but also valid for most versions of Photoshop. The cheat sheet comes in PDF format, which you can easily print using your favorite PDF reader.

2. Photoshop Toolbox Reference

This is a comprehensive Photoshop toolbox reference. You can click on each tool to view its video-manual. It’s very handy if you’re just starting off with Photoshop though even experienced users can find something useful here.

3. Photoshop Etiquette

The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto for Web Designers is a list of helpful and subtle suggestions to organize Photoshop documents, making the transfer of them less painful.

General Resources, PSDs

1. Blue Vertigo

1.1. Graphic Clouds

GraphicClouds.com is a graphic & web design blog providing high quality  photoshop resources with original PSD files and other graphic design resources like textures, icons, patterns, brushes, gimp brushes.

Blue Vertigo is a huge design resources site established in 2003. You can find almost anything there – starting from stock photo marketplaces and ending with color scheme sites.

2. Premium Pixels

Premium Pixels is a bunch of free design resources & tutorials created by Orman Clark. Oman Clark created Premium Pixels to share some of the resources and files he’s created in his quest to make the web a more attractive place.

3. Swift PSD

Swiftpsd offers stunning resources for web, iPhone and iPad. It’s created by Ed Cousins, and swiftpsd is his venture to supply high-quality resources to designers around the world. Launched only couple months ago SwiftPSD looks like a site I’m going to visit often.

4. Designmoo

Designmoo is a community for discovering and sharing free PSDs, vectors, textures, patterns, fonts, and more. Their goal is to build a great network of designers and community resources and provide a centralized location for finding great-looking free design resources.

5. Free PSD

Free PSD offers bunch of free high-quality PSD templates for your use. You’ll find tutorials, brushes, patterns and other Photoshop resources there as well.

6. Design Kindle

Design Kindle is an idea of Build Interactive, a small web design studio founded by Adrian Pelletier. Their goal is to provide the best free design resources on the web by keeping the file quality incredibly high. You can submit files for review too by sending us an e-mail with a preview of the download you’d like to contribute.

7. 365psd

365psd is the world’s highest quality source of PSDs that are free for both personal and commercial use. That means any PSD you download can be reused in any project without worrying about licensing.

8. Little PSD

Little PSD is a brand new (in fact it seems it’s launched only couple days ago) site to find high-quality PSD files.

9. PSD Home

PSD Home is a web gallery for Photoshop PSD files. It collects PSD files, that’s designers give from everywhere to a single website. At PSD Home you can find PSDs pertaining to buttons, icons, text effects, themes, graphics and much more.

10. PSD Graphics

Psdgraphics is one man show, launched as a hobby site.Here you can find a lot of free stuff for webmasters and designers. Enjoy fully editable Photoshop PSD files and high resolution stuff.

Plugins

1. Nik Software

Nik Software, Inc. is a privately-held American company that develops software solutions for the growing digital-imaging and photography markets. Although their plugins are premium only, they’re really worth it. Particularly developed for photo retouching Nik Software is giving photographers the most powerful tools for precise and natural photographic enhancements and corrections without the need for complicated selections or layer masks. You can apply for their live training sections to see the power of this software in action.

2. Fluid Mask 3

Fluid Mask 3 is a very effective tool for separating complex objects from their backgrounds. Fluid Mask 3 lets you isolate difficult areas and apply alternative selections with all new edges find options – making the tough bits easier. It’s a premium plugin, though you can check out the demo version and tutorials to decide whether you want to purchase it or not.

3. Topaz Labs

Topaz Labs distills the latest in imaging technology into useful products that deliver excellent results at a reasonable price. Topaz plugins makes it quick and easy to create stunning and dynamic enhancements that will instantly make your images pop with detail, color and depth. Although they’re not free I consider these plugins the second best choice after Nik Software to enhance your photos remarkably.

Tools

1. Divine

Divine is a plugin that helps you convert Photoshop to WordPress in a few minutes instead of long hours. The idea of making Divine came to a young but talented designer who himself was fed up with wasting time on coding. As soon as you get a tool to convert PSD to WordPress, you save your time, effort and patience. You need no special extended knowledge about HTML, no special skills in coding, basics are completely enough to convert PSD to WordPress.

2. Script Arsenal

Script Arsenal is a handy catalog allowing you to quickly find and apply the required script. It comes to you with 100+ ready-made scripts for creating various effects and streamlining your everyday work flow. Using most of them doesn’t require a substantial Photoshop experience.

3. Compare PSD

ComparePSD compares two Adobe Photoshop PSD files for you and highlights the differences. Layer by layer. Effect by effect. Simple. Plus it is absolutely free.

4. Mr Stacks

Mr. Stacks is a Photoshop script that rapidly generates storyboards, stacks, and PDF(s) for CD check-ins, client-ish presentations, and whatever else it is you do. Helping to nail some of the most monotonous tasks in art direction.

5. Modular Grid Pattern

Modular Grid Pattern is an application for web designers, which helps you quickly and easily to create a modular grid in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks, GIMP, Microsoft Expression Design and other. To use the app directly in Photoshop you only need to download and install the convenient extension.

6. foxGuide

foxGuide is a firefox extension that displays horizontal and vertical guides. Guides will appear as thin lines that float over the webpage. You can move or remove them just the way you do it photoshop. Guides are useful for laying out elements symmetrically, structure a design and improving the overall layout.

7. Photoshop Touch Apps

Touch, mobility, and Adobe Photoshop® CS5 software—how’ that for a creative combination? Adobe and the developer community can now create apps that communicate with Photoshop CS5 via a range of devices and platforms. Explore new Adobe Photoshop Touch apps for iPad, the first to tap into this new connectivity.

8. Pixel Proliferation

Change is a constant. The device landscape is always changing and the device types are proliferating. With the increasing demand for unique mid-screen devices, it is becoming an even more arduous task to keep all of the device resolutions and screen sizes straight. This toolset includes Photoshop CS5 marquee tool presets for common screen resolutions, a collection of layered Photoshop CS5 PSDs each providing common devices for comping and design presentations and a reference chart for resolutions and device landscape.

9.960 Grid System

The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem.

10.GuideGuide

GuideGuide is a tool for columns, rows and mid­points panel for Pho­to­shop CS4 & CS5. It works similarly to the grid tool in InDesign. With GuideGuide it’s incredibly easy to create columns, guides, gutters and midpoints with just a single click.

Have you ever thought that every day, while you are busy doing your work, there are a lot of people doing almost the same thing as you? And they are releasing it. For free.

And sometimes we just forget all this stuff and lose a lot of time doing things that just didn’t need to be done. Someone else has done it for us. Why should you start from scratch if you can get some cool things and just make them better?

So, this is a post with a lot of links, and with my opinion about many of them. In short, we will be talking about:
• Creative photos collections
• Cool Icon packs, Buttons & Menus
• Professional Font faces
• Useful patterns, brushes, backgrounds, textures
• Templates and other miscellaneous elements
• Online generators and other tools

So, let’s rock!

Creative Photo Collections

Actually, most of you always use stock photos in your layouts. Yeah, they are nice, but many of them just don’t get the point across that you want. Don’t get mad, they don’t ruin your work. But they don’t make it brilliant either.

So, usually you have 2 options:

1. Use premium stock photos
2. Take your own photos

I think there is a third option that we almost always forget: Some really artistic and creative photos out there.

We have a lot of photo collections, with photos for specific situations. Think about it, when you are talking about victory, for example, it’s much better to use a real emotional winner photo than a commodity clip art trophy image.

Why they are good: Using in-context funny or emotional images is the easiest way to get your reader’s attention, so you get more time to explain your point.

What you should pay attention to: You must pay attention in copyright notices for images. We can’t steal someone elses image just because it is on the web.

Good Start points:

• Search for: Photo manipulations, Photo manipulation tutorials, [type] photography (“tilt-shift photography”, for example), [type] examples, [type] showcase, [type] collection
• 1StWebDesigner (Photography inspiration) – I think you heard about this blog before, it is amazing, isn’t it?
• From me to you – Jamie’s photography blog, with some amazingly amazing gifs
• Instant Shift (Photo search) – Artistic photo manipulations galleries, like this 80 excellent example of photo manipulation art.
• The design work (tag photos) – Fascinating photo collections, like this panoramic photography gallery
• This Ain’t no Disco - Cool workspaces galleries. As they say “Try not to drool too much”.
• VanderlayDesign (photo search) – Good for design inspiration in general. You should check this cool rain photography collection.
• Web Designer Ledger (photo search) – Really good for inspiration. Check this awesome photography shots to change your mood!
• Flickr (Creative Commons) has always really good photos, and a powerful search engine, that make things even easier.
• TotallyCoolPix, as its name says, is focused on cool photography. This sports pictures collection, for example, is really useful!
• We have also this 10 most inspirational deviantart groups (really good, seriously, you must to check this out).
• Some traditional free / paid stock photo sites like Veer, Public-Domain-Photos, Pixel Perfect Digital, Image After, Design Packs, Free Range Stock, Cepolina, Stock.XCHNG, Morguefile, Toasto and others, are also always a good source.
• Last but not the least, Haznos.org/images (brazilian blog, with google translated version) has a lot of cool collections, like this funny bikes gallery

Cool Icon Packs, Buttons & Menus

Sometimes we need an idea of how could we put those 20 links that the customer wants in a really good-looking menu. Moreover, you have to worry about all the “call to actions” and semiotics stuff for icon and button design.

When you feel like this, it is time to steal someone elses design :D

Why they are good: Depending on the site you use to search, it is possible to find really complete icon packs, with “generic” icons for customization (just the background, for example). Many people may have solved the problem with 30 links in the same menu already.

What you should pay attention: It is worthless to find a really cool icon pack, button or menu that you don’t know how to customize. So, if you get a cool wooden icon pack, but don’t know how to make a “home” icon (maybe it is missing), you can’t use it.

Good Start points:

• Almost every good design blog has an “icon” section, or icon tutorials, they are helpful.
• DryIcons - Free and good icon packs
• HouseOfButtons has the best buttons seen in the web
• Really useful mega buttons pack
• Awesome blurry menu by 1stWebDesigner
• Simple navigation PSD by designdeck
• 10 best icon search engines by savedelete
• 50 high quality and free to use minimalist icon sets by smashingapps
• 47 Clean and High Quality Icon Packs for Designers by onextrapixel
• Simple tabbed navigation in psd by premiumpixels
• Dark navigation in psd by premiumpixels
• Cool Basal icons pack by designkindle
• Clean Social icons by folksnetdesktop
• Fresh icons sets to improve your design by noupe
• Top 10 country flag icon sets by speckyboy
• 20 examples of great navigation by webdesignfan

Professional Font Faces

I have to tell you a secret. I don’t know anything about typography. For real. I know just the basics, that serif and sans-serif stuff, but anything beyond this, don’t count on me.

Everytime I read something about typography I get amazed on how this is a wide field to study. And how we are getting better and better at it.

With all this @font-face stuff, it is almost a crime to not use a really professional font in your headlines (at least) without fear of the monster of cross-browser compatibility.

Why they are good: They give a really professional look to your project and they are easy to use.

What you should pay attention: You should notice copyright restrictions (yeah, not every font is free), and whether or not the font you want has some special characters (it is hard to find, for example, c with cedilla or grave accent, really used in Portuguese).

Good Start points:

• We have a lot of free font download sites, like dafont, 1001 free fonts, acidfonts, urbanfonts, fontstock and much more, just google it :D .
• Abduzeedo’s friday fresh free fonts series – 99 episodes in this series, so you have a lot of fonts to try.
• Design instruct (Jacob gube’s posts) – I don’t know where he finds those fonts, but they are just amazing.
• HongKiat (fonts search) – Some really good collections!
• 1StWebDesigner awesome minimal fonts collection and professional fonts collection.
• WebDesignerLedger (fonts search) – Some good ones, like this 11 fonts collection.
• Massive collection of elegant thin fonts and 30 of the best font foundries by webdesignerdepot
• 25 popular websites to download free fonts by djdesignerlab
• 40 beautiful free fonts for creating attractive typography headlines, 30 free fonts which are perfect for professional logo designs and 30 top best free fonts from 2010 by creativenerds
• 15 free high quality fonts for minimal designs by slicescript
• 25 free fonts perfect for fontface revived by speckyboy
• 30 websites to download great fonts and 15 free graffiti fonts for your design needs by reencoded
• 30 free script fonts for calligraphy and 35 free grunge fonts for abstract designs by visionwidget
  

Useful Patterns, Backgrounds, Textures

Yeah, I love patterns and textures. I used to download patterns because some of them I just don’t know how to create myself, and sometimes I just need a preview of how the work would look with that pattern. Actually, there are so many combinations of patterns, textures and brushes that you could spend all your life just trying combinations. So it is better just to pick some good samples, isn’t it?

Why they are good: They save you a lot of time, with complex and tiled patterns.

What you should pay attention: When you use a texture for websites you have to pay attention in their screen size, because we have a lot of different screen dimensions nowadays, thus many users can see that ugly white background when your texture ends.

Good Start points:

• Previously said photo stock sites (actually a texture can be a photo :D)
• Subtlepatterns, Patterncooler – Whole sites dedicated to patterns!
• 41 free texture packs and other textures (texture search) by designm.ag
• visionwidget’s free HQ photos – like this awesome wooden textures colection
• Vanderlaydesign (texture search)
• Myinkblog (textures category) – Really good collections, like this 7 High Resolution Stone Textures
• WebDesignerDepot patterns and textures – like this funkies patterns collection
• 20 great resources download free patterns by makeuseof
• Best free textures and patterns of 2010 by webdesignledger
• 60 beautiful high resolution paper backgrounds by photoshoproadmap
• A collection of free carpet textures by naldzgraphics
• 50 free wood textures for your designs and 45 awesome abstract textures by reencoded
• 1000 grunge photoshop brushes (Yeah, brushes, why not?) and 50 fantastic textures for your toolbox by speckyboy
• 34 must have texture packs for web designers by inspiremonkey
• Awesome collection of 60 high quality free textures by pelfusion
• 34 pebble textures for a cool round up of design choices by naldzgraphics
• 35 free adobe illustrator patterns sets a designer should use by designresourcebox
• 35 free abstract background pattern and texture designs by designmodo

Templates and Other Elements

Yeah, we have a lot of other elements ready to use, that couldn’t be in above list. There are a lot of boxes, ribbons, slide shows, form elements, complete page templates and many other things that you could use in your work. There are a lot of creative design solutions for problems that we all could pass (like slide shows, or complete admin panels), and with this samples, you save a lot of precious hours.

Why they are good: They surely save you a lot of time, and brings you inspiration for common problems.

What you should pay attention: For every element we have a lot of possibilities, and many of them could be good. You don’t have to find a magical unique solution for everything, for each problem there’s more than likely a solution out there. This is why we have so many links in here :D

Good Start points:

• Some good sites like NetTuts+, DesignInstruct and Freepsdfiles.net are full of good samples and elements
• 10 useful search engines for graphic designers by blog.medhley.com
• 50 stunning pixel perfect psd freebies by inspirationfeed
• Create a portfolio web layout in photoshop by webdesignfan
• Free travel and hotel website templates and Web design elements psds for user interface design by visionwidget
• 30 energy infused free photoshop web design psd files by creativefan
• 50 creative web interfaces from deviantart by reencoded
• 25 photoshop web layout design tutorials by designmodo
• Best sites for web resources by inspiredology
• 50 free psd ui kits and templates for web designers by speckyboy
• Awesome Html5 admin template by medialoot
• Free admin skin available for download by netdreams
• Free html/css & jquery admin panel inadmin by indeziner
• GUI free css template by chocotemplates
• Free admin template by Mathew Davies

Are You Hungry Yet?

I know that you have some useful links to share too. Why don’t you put them in comments, or write a response in your blog?

I’m sure that we will always need new sources to make our designing process more effective.

Succinctness

When creating an infographic your main goal is to answer a specific question or problem. Broach a question you want to cover in your graphic and start by answering it concisely. After you’ve done that you can add additional facts or information to make your graphic broader. Being concise about your topic will also help to create a more effective visualization of the graphic.

The World’s Most Disastrous Oil Spills is the title for an infographic created by Travel Insurance. Their infographic answers the question precisely. After the map with biggest oil spills they’ve added more significant and interesting facts. This is a prime example of being concise and relevant.

Creativity

Ingenuity and design is what separates an infographic from the simple charts you see elsewhere. Think of an infographic as a poster in which you can express yourself while keeping in mind the information you have to include. Don’t be afraid to use typography, illustrations, icons or other design elements. Creativity and a bit of an audacious design will make your infographics stand out.

This graphic, supplied by Minicrane-Hire provides some information about the original UNIC mini-spidercrane, which is celebrating its 8th anniversary this year. The design is definitely unique and creative,and is more about catchy and light facts than a serious analysis, so the emphasis is on creativity. The design is sort of grungy and resembles a poster. It’s really pleasing and engaging.

Visualization

You don’t want your infographic to be just plain text. Plain data is boring and can sometimes be hard to comprehend. Use geometric shapes, charts, diagrams, anything that can help people visualize your data. If possible, replace words with icons or symbols. Of course, you have to keep the information front and center since that’s the ‘info’ in infographic. Nevertheless, remember that nowadays people are a lot more visual thanks to technology, and aren’t as interested in plainly presented information.

This infographic by Rackscape is an outstanding example of visualization in infographics. They’ve created a graphic about bytes, which may seem quite boring, though they’ve managed to make it extremely enjoyable and interesting. Each piece of information is accompanied by a large colorful illustration so the infographic is easy to comprehend.

Organization

Precise and well-organized information is the basis of any great infographic. Compare various information sources, make sure your acquired data is objective and relevant enough. Even the most elegant design won’t attract readers if the information is incorrect. Sometimes Google won’t be enough, you’ll have to visit a library or even turn to an expert. Infographics will be easier to create if you have some prior knowledge about the topic, or have a really good idea where to research the information. Information organization is one of the most essential things when designing an infographic. You have to try to organize your information contextually and visually.

This infographic about earthquakes is a collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media. Design is not playing the main role in this graphic though the information and facts are very applicable and neatly organized. They’ve includes some important facts together with some demonstrative graphs.

Transparency

Infographics can be subjective and lead readers to biased conclusions. Always cite your information sources and give readers the chance to explore the information deeper if they want to. Give them the opportunity to find additional information straight from your infographic. Don’t hide your information (no matter how ‘top secret’ you think the source is) because you’re publishing the graphic one way or another.

This is another collaboration between GOOD and Column Five Media. They’ve created an infographic about electricity and energy supplies in Africa. It’s a complex subject so some people might want to look deeper into it. Though they’ve not included direct links, there is the list of sources used in the bottom of infographic.

Accuracy

Be accurate and precise when designing infographics. It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re trying to scale your data in charts and graphics. Use different sizes and shapes that visualize data, but don’t be excessive. You should never draw the shapes by hand and without a base scale. Use mathematical equations, compare the numbers and then use the same proportions in graphics.

In this infographic by Column Five Media we can see perfect proportions being used. They’re using proportional semicircles to compare goods purchased in store with goods purchased online. The radius ratio of circles ideally matches the ratio of numbers.

Relevance

Find the style and look that fits your infographic. If you’re creating an infographic about an important and sensitive topic don’t make it bright and dashing. Choose a design that’s appropriate and reflects the topic best.

This infographic by Visions Service Adventures is a perfect example of appropriate infographic design. They’ve made an infographic about struggling countries in the world so they’ve included a world map as well as some illustrative icons and illustrations that reflect on the topic.

Simplicity

Don’t exaggerate with visual elements and the amount of information in infographics. Having a neatly-designed and informative infographic is good, but too much detail can make it too scattered and difficult to comprehend. Knowing your target audience will also help you to adjust the visual complexity and design of the infographic. If you’re designing an infographic, let’s say, for a poster that’s going to be seen on a streetlight a simple infographic is more likely to attract attention. People are not willing to spend time on complex graphics and data if they’re in rush. However if you’re creating an infographic for a magazine you can afford to include more complicated charts and in-depth information because it’s more likely that people will spend more time looking at your infographic.

What’s The Deal With Bloggers by Flowtown is a great example of simplicity in infographics. They’ve used a plain background, solid colors and simple charts to present the data. The result is a splendid, demonstrative and easy to understand infographic.

Blogs & Related Sites

Just like with web design, there are many blogs out there dedicated to infographics and data visualization. Even if you’re not so interested in infographics you can find really useful and interesting information on some of them. Below you’ll find 10 of the best blogs and websites dedicated to infographics, data visualization and the art of information.

1. Flowing Data

FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.

2. Information Aesthetics

Information Aesthetics is a weblog that explores the symbiotic relationship between creative design and the field of information visualization. More specifically, it collects projects that represent data or information in original or intriguing ways.

3. The Infographics Showcase

Infographics Showcase is collecting the best of the web infographics with a nod to some exciting graphic design. If you love information communicated in a visually appealing and simple manner then you are in the right place.

4. Information Is Beautiful

David McCandless, is a London-based author, writer and designer. He’s written for The Guardian, Wired and others. He’s into anything strange and interesting. Information Is Beautiful is his blog where you’ll find visualized ideas, issues, knowledge and data.

5. Cool Infographics

Cool Infographics is a blog that highlights some of the best examples of data visualizations and infographics found in magazines, newspapers and on the Internet.

6. Strange Maps

Frank Jacobs loves maps, but finds most atlases too predictable. He collects and comments on all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006.

7. Chart Porn

Chart Porn is compiled by Washington DC based economist/artist Dustin Smith.  This site grew out of an admiration for all the amazing data analysis work being done in the world, and the desire to pull it all together in one place.  The blog’s original focus on economics and graphic design has expanded over time to cover a wide range of topics.

8. Visual Complexity

VisualComplexity intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

9. Data Visualization

Data Visualization is a transversal discipline which harnesses the immense power of visual communication in order to explain, in an understandable manner, the relationships of meaning, cause and dependency which can be found among the great abstract masses of information generated by scientific and social processes.

10. Infographics News

Infographics News is a blog dedicated primarily to news, curiosities and information about infographics. They also cover news related to data visualization and unusual infographics.

Information Sources & Resources

Information quality is crucial in infographics. If you have to work with infographics quite often, having a resource and data library is very important. I’ve gathered some of the best free websites and services that offer high-quality current data in many categories.

1. U.S. Census Bureau

U.S. Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation’s people and economy. They provide the best mix of timeliness, relevancy, quality, and cost for the data they collect and provide. This website contains the Census Bureau’s Statistical Quality Standards, information quality guidelines, and procedures to seek correction of information that does not comply with the information quality guidelines.

2. Gallup

Gallup Daily News provides unique, unrivaled insight into the political, economic, and social issues of the moment. Gallup Daily and global tracking make Gallup Daily News a must-read for audiences that need the most accurate and up-to-date information on the thoughts of people around the world.

3. Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms.

4. Mbendi

MBendi Information Services (Pty) Ltd is a privately owned Internet business publishing company founded in 1995 and based in Cape Town, South Africa. The company uses the Internet to support business and political decision makers worldwide.

5. NumberOf

Here at NumberOf they try to answer the question that begins with “How Many..?”. All the facts are divided into five different categories. In order to keep the facts correct, they verify each fact after 6 months of its last modification.

6. Nation Master

Nation Master is a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster has a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, UN, and OECD. Using the form above, you can generate maps and graphs on all kinds of statistics with ease.

7. Economic Research Service

The Economic Research Service is a primary source of economic information and research in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With over 350 employees, ERS conducts a research program to inform public and private decision making on economic and policy issues involving food, farming, natural resources, and rural development.

8. Every Block

EveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city. They aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. They’re a geographic filter — a “news feed” for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.

9. Guardian Data Blog

Guardian News & Media (GNM) is the national division of Guardian Media Group. It publishes the Group’s flagship national newspapers – the Guardian and the Observer – as well as Guardian Weekly, one of the world’s best-selling international weekly newspapers, and the guardian.co.uk website. Their Data Blog is an awesome place to find infographics and data visualization daily.

10. World Bank Data

This site is meant to provide all users with improved access to World Bank data and to make that data easy to find and use. The World Bank recognizes that transparency and accountability are essential to the development process and central to achieving the Bank’s mission to alleviate poverty.

11. Freebase

Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data of almost 20 million entities. An entity is a single person, place, or thing. Freebase connects entities together as a graph. Most of the topics are associated with one or more types (such as people, places, books, films, etc) and may have additional properties like “date of birth” for a person or latitude and longitude for a location. These types and properties and related concepts are called Schema.

12. Geo Commons

GeoCommons enables everyone to find, use and share geographic data and maps. Easily create rich interactive visualizations to solve problems without any experience using traditional mapping tools.

13. Transparency Data

Transparency Data is a central source for federal lobbying disclosure, federal grants and contracts, earmarks and federal and state campaign contributions. Here you can begin your search, find the information you need, and then download records of what a candidate has received, what an individual has given, how much an organization has spent on lobbying, and many other queries.

14. OECD Statistics

The mission of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world. OECD.Stat includes data and metadata for OECD countries and selected non-member economies.

15. Kaiser Family Foundation

A leader in health policy and communications, the Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the U.S., as well as the U.S. role in global health policy.  Unlike grant-making foundations, Kaiser develops and runs its own research and communications programs, sometimes in partnership with other non-profit research organizations or major media companies.

Premium Resources

Finding high-quality data newspapers and other free services and sorting it in the way you need it can often be quite frustrating and time-consuming. We’d all love to get the exact data we need neatly delivered and as cheap as possible. I’ve gathered a couple of premium data marketplaces and sources for you to find dozens of high-quality data sheets. You can also make a requests for specific data you’re looking for. Unfortunately, I was able to find only three services, so if you know some more you could share them in the comments section.

1. Data Market

Launched in May 2010, DataMarket is a data portal that provides access to statistics and structured data from various public and private sector organizations. This enables users to find, compare, visualize and download statistics from organizations such as the UN, World Bank, Eurostat, Gapminder and others in a single place. Time series can be linked to news events and any selected data can be downloaded in a format suitable for use elsewhere, e.g. in Excel.

2. Data Marketplace

Data Marketplace makes it easy for people to find, buy and sell data online. Most data must be aggregated, cleaned, and analyzed to extract useful information. It doesn’t make sense that the same person should do all of these things. Data Marketplace connects people who need data with people who are good at collecting, cleaning, and analyzing it.

3. Infochimps

Infochimps is a place to find, sell and share data with others. It comes in two forms on our site: Data Sets: Instantly available for download. Some are free and some are for sale. Data APIs: Available with a simple subscription and an API key. Access very large or frequently updated data sets in minutes without having to host or scrape anything.

Inspiration

1. The Dangers of Driving

2. How Would You Like Your Graphic Design?

3. United States of Unhappy Campers

4. Digital Nostalgia

5. Happy Birthday Formula 

6. The Potato Lifecycle

7. Visualizing Daily Activities With Media Wheel 

8. Treni ad alta velocità

9. How Developmental Aid Flows Around The Globe

10. My Head Hurts

11. The Ride of Your Life

12. iPod plus iTunes Timeline

13. How Coffee Affects the Global Economy

14. Bus Ride 37 Mintutes

15. Periodic Table of Typefaces

First off, what I’d like to achieve with this article is to get your feedback not only these resources, but also your opinion on how you think these types of sites help or hurt our design community. So keep that in mind as you read through this and browse the site. Also feel free to offer other sites you’ve found that provide outstanding resources such as this one.

DesignMoo, according to their about page, is…

“a community of designers who think it’s best to share our design resources. That means we love to share fonts, brushes, textures, icons, illustrations, and more with anyone that might find them useful.”

And it’s true. It’s all free resources (but they just released a paid account with extras), contributed by some of the best designers around the world. It’s co-owned and operated by Chris Wallace and Rich Hemsley. Chris is owner of LiftUX, runs Chris-Wallace.com, tweets as @chriswallace and shoots on Dribbble of course. Rich Hemsley is the awesome community manager, tweets as @richhemsley and Dribbbles as well. The community is currently invite-only but growing very quickly and making a real wake in our design world. Check out some of the resources by a few of these amazing designers.

Rich Hemsley – iPhone 4 Retina GUI

Chris Wallace – vCard PSD

Allison Grayce Nold – Abstract Tileable Patterns

Graham Smith – Logo Identity Guideline Template

Kyle Steed – Clumsy

Hillary Hopper – Invite Stamp Collection

It’s About Quality

So as you can see, we’re not talking about lame resources here. This isn’t clip art in a glorified form or anything. No, this is real stuff you can actually use and many times it will actually be better than what we ourselves can design. I’ve personally used several of these resources in my client’s work and it not only saves time, but looks awesome. The important thing to remember if you ever get into this community is to keep it awesome. Keep the elements you submit to a spectacular level. Give feedback, utilize what others offer, and contribute when you can.

What DesignMoo Offers

I recognize that there’s a million free resource sites out there. But like I mentioned, there’s none that I know of that provide the quality elements DesignMoo does. Here’s a breakdown of some elements for you to chew on and make a better, more informed opinion about this community.

Iconified

Sexy icons are always a must for sites these days. It adds personality and enhances the look of the site immensely, if used properly of course. Not everyone can be an icon designer, that’s why I’m very thankful for those people sharing their mad skills with those of us less fortunate in this area of design.

Julien Martin – Le Calendrier 2011

Pontus Johansson – iPhone Icons

Peter Burdette – Bookshelf Icon

Umar Irshad – 32px Glyphs

Alfred Pereira – Social Buttons Vol2

UI Elements

And who could turn down some really sweet UI elements? These things are few and far between to look this good and take several hours to create. So I’m game for grabbing some to use that were made by some down right awesome people. Take a look.

Morgan Allan Knutson – Chutzpah User Interface Kit

Rich Hemsley – Transparent Menu

Josh Hemsley – Dark Sexy UI Elements

Yummy Textures and Patterns

Ah yes, finally some great textures. I know you can find them lots of places but these are seriously some of the highest quality ones I’ve seen…and they’re more web-related than some other sites out there. Here’s a few pretty sweet ones to chew on.

Hillary Hopper – Argyle Textures

Liam McKay – Function Subtle Grunge Brushes

David Lopez – Bokeh

Oh Glorious Fonts

We designers love some fonts. Whether we’re great typographers or not, we still like to have a plethora of them to choose from. And with the way CSS3 is breaking into the market and things like CuFon and such, we can utilize more of these fonts on our sites without the old “make an image” method. Here’s some fonts you may never have seen. Pretty nice, eh?

Brian Carroll – Folly by Litchytype

Jed Bridges - Cerus Caps

A Visual Idiot – Novak

So Does Free Raise Any Issues?

The simple answer is yes, but there’s also a no in there. Free can cause problems. Problems like overuse, looking cheap, and being misused in general. But DesignMoo is doing things a little bit differently. They are adhering to a level of quality that’s unmatched in the marketplace and making sure to keep that level of quality by allowing it to be invite only. It works similar to Dribbble‘s invite system, if you’re familiar with that, in that members get limited invites each month or so and the people they invite appear under them so everyone knows if you’re keeping the quality level up or just inviting your best buds. There’s nothing wrong with inviting friends, but make sure they know what they’re doing and can contribute great stuff.

In saying that, I don’t see problems for DesignMoo at this point, maybe in the future, but that bridge will be crossed when they come to it. Chris and Rich are infatuated with great design so I highly doubt it will ever turn into anything short of extraordinary.

Something to Recognize

If you’ve thoroughly read this far, you’ll know that I’ve mentioned there are other sites that provide similar services to what DesignMoo does. And I said none compare…and I still believe that. In fact, during my writing of this article, DesignMoo announced they have acquired 365psd.com. We’re not sure of the future of the two and how they will combine their resources (or if they will), but this just proves how great and powerful of a resource this site can and will be. You can read the full article on the “merger” over at Jon Notie’s blog.

My Take on This and That

I’m a design lover as well and I get irritated when there’s a site that could be great but has poor design features or usability. I realize that your design program is not everything for a website, but design itself entails a lot. It has a dash of user experience and a hint of personality among many other elements. Design is all around us and there’s nothing wrong with a site that provides resources and elements that can enhance the user experience of a site, especially when they are at no cost to use. Quality elements are great. An outstanding collection of them for us to choose from is even better. So with that, I want to encourage you to comment below and tell me what you think of design resource sites. What do you find helpful about them? Or hurtful about them? Do you have any ones other than DesignMoo? Let’s get conversing.

Inspirational Articles

1. 40 Stunningly Creative Resume Designs on DeviantArt

Give your resumes a creative effect with these 40 great resume design roundups created by some Deviantart users.

2. 60 Extremely Creative Movie Posters

Movie posters are a great way in advertising films. Let’s take a read on this showcase of sixty creatively done movie posters to give you an idea on how can movie posters be attractive to viewers.

3. 55 Trendy Web Design Interfaces From Deviantart

Be inspired with this article roundup of trendy web interfaces design by some Deviantart users.

4. 50 Superb 3D Flash Websites You Must See

Flash websites really capture viewers’ attention. As what this article say, they can be considered as different kind of art in the website community. This article showcases 3D Flash websites for you to get inspired.

5. 45 Interesting Examples of Big Backgrounds in Web Design

Small in size monitors are now going out of the trend and fast and large monitor resolution are now advancing. To give better look on websites, web designs with large backgrounds are now created. Be inspired with this article that showcases websites with big backgrounds.

6. 50 Examples of Drop-Down Navigation Menus in Web Designs

Drop-down menus are great way to group your contents into categories, and it helps viewers to find what they are looking for easily. In this article, you will find a collection of different types of drop-down menus used in several websites.

7. Beautiful Footers in Modern Web Design for Inspiration

Read and get inspired by this collection of several modern designed footers of different kinds of website.

8. Excellent Examples of Using Photos in Web Design

Photos used as a background gives your viewers specific information on what you are advertising for. In this article, you will find several websites that use a large photo as the background or header.

9. 60 Beautiful Clean and Light Web Designs for Inspiration

Clean and light web designs give professional and elegant look on websites. This article showcases websites with clean and light design.

10. 25 Beautiful Examples of “Coming Soon” Pages

There are times that websites has a Coming Soon message on the page. This article

11. 20 Logos with Clever Negative Space

Designers used different kinds of techniques now to give twists on their designs. Logo designers use negative space to form figures to convey some message. In this article, you will see several logos that have negative spaces.

12. 30 Fresh and Beautiful Web Designs

A roundup of websites that are beautifully made and gives a refreshing look for viewers.

13. 35 Colorful Web Designs to Inspire You

Colors capture viewers’ attention, that’s why most designers create websites that are colorful. In this article, you

14. 30 Hilarious Print Advertisements

An effective way to advertise is by using print outs or print ads. These are commonly found on magazines, billboards and other periodicals. This article gives you an inspiration by presenting hilarious print advertisements.

15. 40 Sexy And Creative Typographic Logo Designs

I haven’t thought that even logos can be modern and creative. Take time to read this article to get amazed and be inspired with this collection of sexy and creative typographic logo designs.

16. 30 Powerful and Compelling Public Awareness Print Ads

Public awareness print ads tend to promote goodness for the people. These ads should encourage people to follow what the ad is saying. This article compiles effective print ads of public awareness.

17. 20 Amazing Creature Illustrations by Imaginism

Take a look at these creatures that were done by the imaginative minds of designers.

18. 20 Amazing Watercolor Masterpieces

Watercolor paintings are one thing I really admire, I find them refreshing and creative. This compilation offers beautifully painted masterpieces with the use of watercolor.

19. 20 Hilarious and Effective Outdoor Advertisements

Here is a fun post of collection of advertisements that have awesome concepts for inspiration.

20. Showcase of Transparency in Web Design

Transparency is one trend designers use in designing a website. Here is a collection of beautifully designed websites with transparency.

Freebies

21. 30 Stylish jQuery Tooltip Plugins For Catchy Designs

Here are jQuery tooltip plugins that you can use to make your web designs more attractive.

22. 84 of the best vector wallpapers

To give a creative look for your desktop, take a look at this article that compiles the best vector wallpapers.

23. 30 Free Fonts Best for Business Logos

Check out these free fonts you can download and use in creating a business logo.

24. 45 Web Builders to Create an Insanely Awesome Free Website

Here are forty-five web builders you may want to check to create a free website in an easy way.

25. Free WordPress Theme: Zexeev

Zexeev is a free theme you can use in WordPress. Take a look on this article to find out on what it can offer.

26. 25 Must Have iPhone Apps for Graphic Designers

Other than iPad, iPhone is also having its way to be popular. This gadget can also be useful for graphic designers for it offers several applications that are for designing purposes. This article compiles iPhone applications dedicated for graphic designers.

27. Social Sketches: Exclusive Free Hand-Sketched Icon Set

Social Sketches offers free icons that are in sketch style to give a personal touch on your designs.

28. 40 New and Trendy Free Social Media Bookmark Icon Sets

These are compilation of social icons in different designs that you may use in linking to social media such as Digg, Stumble Upon, Delicious and Twitter. And these are for free!

29. 40 Essential CSS Templates, Resources and Downloads

This is a great article for those who are searching for CSS templates and resources.

30. 20 Useful Free PDF ebooks for Designers and Bloggers

Books are great tools when you would like to freshen up your memory or wants to learn new things, good thing that PDF e-books are born. In this way, we can read books with the use of monitors and this is very useful for tech-y persons like me. This article rounds up free PDF e-book that designers and bloggers can download and read.

31. 40 High Quality Free PSD Files Released In 2010

Who doesn’t wants free high-quality of PSD files to use in your designs? You may find 40 free downloadable PSD files on this article.

32. PSD Website Templates: Free High Quality Designs

How about website templates? These are free and high in quality. Read and choose what you like the best, then download.

33. Desktop Wallpapers for Minimalist Lovers

I think wallpaper with minimal designs are the best as desktop backgrounds. Try reading this article that rounds up desktop wallpapers for minimalist lovers.

34. 200+ Exclusive Free Icons: “Reflection”

Webdesigner Depot created a stylish and elegant icons named, Reflection. Click the link or the picture below to download the icons.

35. 10 Must-Have FireFox Plugins For Web Designers

Here is an article that compiles must-have plugins for Firefox browser that can be useful for web designers.

How-To’s

36. 40+ Best Cinema 4D Tutorials that You’ll Love to Learn

This is a compilation of the best Cinema 4D tutorials and practices you may use in creating 4D designs.

37. 140+ High Quality Categorized Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials

Typography also affects on what message a design conveys. Here are tutorials that will guide you in creating beautiful effects on your texts.

38. Create A Detailed Blue WordPress Blog Layout In Photoshop

Here is a detailed tutorial of on how can you create a WordPress blog layout in a Blue color.

39. Essential Photoshop Poster Tutorials

This article presents you great compilation of Photoshop tutorials you may use in creating poster designs. You will not only learn how to use Photoshop, you may also learn different techniques when creating such designs.

40. Matte Painting: Create A Distressed Surreal Cityscape

This tutorial helps you transform a picture in a matte painting with a distressed effect by using Adobe Photoshop.

41. 60 Cartoon Character Illustration Tutorials

This article gives you good cartoon character tutorials with the use of Adobe Illustrator.

42. How to Use The Pencil Tool and The Paintbrush Tool to Pimp Your Picture

In this tutorial, you will be learning how to use Pencil Tool and Paintbrush Tool and some techniques on how to polish a simple picture with the use of these tools.

43. How To Create A Grungy And “Sticky” Icon With Photoshop – Free Icon Set Available!

Create a grungy and sticky icon using Photoshop with this tutorial.

44. 17 Tutorials for Designing Your Own Business Card

For freelancers, business cards are very important in finding clients and promoting yourselves. This article is a compilation of seventeen business card tutorials.

45. Design a clean sports magazine-style web layout with Photoshop

This very simple and easy tutorial lets your create a magazine-styled layout for a sports website.

And that’s it. Those are some of the most read articles on different design blogs for 2010. You can share with us your personal choice of designing article for 2010, just put the link on the Comment section.

People go crazy on Christmas inspired/related designs, where nothing is over done or too subtle. After all, Christmas is about love, peace & joy!

In this article, I will be sharing tons of resources & images to all the bloggers, readers and everybody who’s reading this with theme of Christmas and Holidays.  You may say it’s too late for this kind of article – but I am saying, while there is winter in the weather and people are still trying to get over New Year and start working – it’s not too late!

Christmas Templates

1. Merry Christmas

2. Christmas Eve

3. Metamorph Xmas

4. Metamorph Christmas

5. Christmas Website Template

6.Happy Holidays

7. Christmas

8. Gift Blog

Holiday Fonts

1. 4YeoXmas

2.Xmas Tyme

3. Xmas One

4.GE Christmas Joy

5. Christmas Wreath

6. Xmas Promotions Symbols

7. Typographers Holidayfont

8. Faux Snow

9. Xmas Batzz

10. Christmas Time

11. PC Snowballs

12. PF Wreath

13. JS Snowbiz

14. Mickey’s Merry Christmas

15. Santa’s Sleigh

16. Christmas on crack

17. Candy Cane

18. Bonnet

19. Santa’s Big Secret

20. Kringle

Christmas Icons

1. Archigraphs Christmas Dock Icons

2. Christmas Feed Icons

3. Free Christmas Icons for You

4. Christmas Icon Set

5. Santa’s Set

6. Christmas Buddy Icons

7. Christmas XP

8. Christmas Icons 2007

9. Christmas icons

10. Christmas Dock Icons

11. Christmas icons

12. Xtal Icons

13. Christmas Icons

14. Christmas pack

15. Christmas Icons

16. Xmas pack

17. Adobe CS3 Icons – xMas style

18. Christmas Dock Icons

19. Christmas Icons

20. Something For Christmas – Win

21. The Day before Christmas

22. Christmas Set

23. Christmas Holiday Icons

24. Happy Holidays 2005

25. Christmas icons

Christmas Photoshop Tutorials

1. Christmas Wallpaper

A nice glowing tree-top for the Christmas tree gives it a nice highlight to the image.

2. Merry Christmas Tree

This tutorial teaches how to make a Christmas tree made up of glowing stars.

3. Photoshop Christmas Tree

This Christmas tree is almost life-like, this tutorial is great for Christmas cards.

4.Christmas Tree Ornament

Add detail to your Christmas ball ornament images with this tutorial.

5. We Wish you a Merry Christmas

This tutorial makes a jolly image with snow and a bright-colored snowman.

6. Holiday Wreath

Make your own holiday wreath, this tutorial will show you how.

7. Christmas Shiny Background

Create that glossy background effect to your Christmas wallpaper to make the image pop-out.

8. A Great Holiday Wallpaper with Christmas Balls

Christmas balls completes a Christmas image. Just because they add that jolly feel and aura.

9. Night Before Christmas

A great combination of shapes, light & gradient effects. This tutorial would really help you create a very warm and calm Christmas wallpaper.

10. Christmas Ornaments Lights Balls

The lighted Christmas balls is an exquisite touch to the image. Make one yourself with this tutorial.

11. How to Create A Christmas Wreath

This tutorial will help you create a more realistic image of a traditional Christmas wreath.

12. New Year or Christmas Card

This tutorial will teach you how to make a simple greeting card, good for Christmas & New Year greetings.

13. Christmas Stars

Create a glowing Christmas star images with this tutorial. Make the brightest star possible!

14. How to Create A Christmas Card in Photoshop

This tutorial will teach you basic techniques on how to make your very own personalized greeting Christmas cards.

15. How to Create Xmas Balls in Photoshop

Create colorful and stunning Christmas balls to complete the Christmas touch to your greeting cards and wallpapers.

16. Xmas Tree Wallpaper in Photoshop

The glowing Christmas tree makes a great concept and the additional glittery highlights makes a perfect Christmas touch. Learn how to achieve this image with this tutorial.

17. Xmas Wrapped Text Effect

Learn how to create colorful gift-wrapped letters with this tutorial.

18. Make a Sketchy Wallpaper

Sketchy drawing effects never get old. Learn how to make one with a Christmas inspired theme with this tutorial.

19. Christmas Glass Ornaments

This tutorial will teach you how to create a realistic Christmas ball ornament with light effects.

20. Decorate with Colored Lights

Colored lights says everything about Christmas. It gives it the final touch to Christmas trees and lights up the town. Learn how to make one using Photoshop.

In this article, I’ll be presenting 20 great web applications alternatives to your usual desktop software. Hope you will love it.

1. Google Docs

Google Docs serves as your online productivity tool. It will let you create your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more online writing tool.

Alternative for :

• Microsoft Office
• Open Office

2. Meebo

Meebo is a web platform for your mostly chat applications. You can login your IM accounts at the same time or individual accounts.

Alternative for:

• Facebook Chat
• Yahoo Messenger
• AIM
• Windows Live Messenger

3. Slide Rocket

Presentations are really vital tool for business, education , projects and more. With Slide Rocket, a web presentation tool that allows you to create your own presentation. It presents some of the features in PowerPoint.

Alternative for:

• Microsoft PowerPoint
• OpenOffice Impress

4. Aviary

Aviary is a powerful web creation tools for photo editing, logos, web templates, color palettes , audio editing and more.  There list includes Phoenix: Image Editor, Toucan: Color Editor, Myna: Audio Editor, Peacock: Effects Editor, Raven: Vector Editor, Falcon: Image Markup and Roc: Music Creator.

Alternative for:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Soundbooth

5. Mint

Are you having a hard time to manage your money? Then Mint is all you need. It is a web tool to access to your free personal financial and online management tool.  It will help you to organize your financial accounts, set your budgets needs, and put up your savings.

Alternative for:

• Quicken

6. JayCut

JayCut is a web video editing software. With a user-friendly environment, it will let you create your videos, add and edit clips, transitions, effects, audio, download, export in Youtube and more.

Alternative for:

• Windows Movie Maker
• Ulead
• Other Video Editing Software

7. WobZip

Wobzip is an online tool that makes you uncompressed your files on the fly. It supports different compression format such as ZIP, RAR, and more zip formats. It has also an active scanner that scan your compressed files before unzipping it.

Alternative for:

• Unzipping Softwares

8. Zamzar

Zamzar is a powerful online file conversion tool. It converts various formats for documents, image, music, video, e-book, compressed files, cad formats. Just follow 4 easy steps to convert your files instantly.

Alternative for:

• File Conversion Software

9. Hulu

Hulu is a video/TV streaming website that lets you watch your favorite tv shows right at your computer. If you missed some of your favorites episode you can just tune in here and enjoy watching.  Hulu is a US exclusive website, but if you are outside the US and trying to access it, you can try this link.

Alternative for:

• TV Tuner Software

10. TokBox

If you love to video chat, TokBox is a great online video chatting applications. For free users, you can chat up to 20 people. Just simply sign up,invite your friends and start video chatting.

Alternative for:

• Video Chat

11. Moof

Moof is an online web streaming music online for your favorite music. It is like bringing your all favorite music rolled into one place. One of the great feature is you can export your iTunes library and put it into web so you will never missed out your favorite tune.

Alternative for:

• iTunes
• Music Streaming Software

12. ESET Online Virus Scanner

Everyone wants to be secure in terms of viruses and malware. ESET Online Virus Scanner deep scan your PC using your web browser.  The good thing is that you don’t need to install the software and it is always up to date.

Alternative for:

• Anti Virus Software

13. Bitlet

Bitlet is a web application that lets you download your torrents. Just upload .torrent file on your computer or direct Bitlet to torrent and Bitlet will do it for you.

Alternative for:

• BitTorrent Client

14. icloud

icloud is a web operating system over the web. It is like bringing your own desktop and files running in your web browser that includes an office suite, media player, chat client, games, productivity tool, utility applications and more. Now you won’t worry that you are working in a different PC.

Alternative for:

• Operating System

15. Splashup

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager.  It will let you manage your images and save it in different format. Various features that are likely with Photoshop.

Alternative for:

• Image Editing Tool

16. Wufoo

Wufoo is a great building tool for your forms, invitations and survey applications. It makes your collecting of data much easier and in customize way.

Alternative for:

• Survey Creating Tool

17. Google Voice

Google Voice makes a huge deal in international calling communication. It delivers various features such as voicemail transcription, one number calling, sms to email, block callers, screen callers, conference call and more. Bringing your all phone into your gmail account given that you are in US and Canada.

Alternative for:

• Skype

18. movavi

movavi is an online video files converter. It supports multiple formats that you need for your videos. In just 3 simple step, you will get your converted video file and watch.

Alternative for:

• Videora
• Xilisoft Video Converter
• Other Video Converter Tool

19. HootSuite

HootSuite is a web apps for your social  networking experience. Updating and monitoring your social activities such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress and Ping.fm will be easy.It is also good for businesses that tracks statistics of their business over the web.

Alternative for:

• Social Network Tool
• Statistics Tracking Tool

20. Balsamiq

Balsamiq is a web wireframing tool that is great for web designer and developers. It will make your drawing more in detailed and rearrange it easily.  It is a great tool to collaborate your team work.

Hope you will enjoy this great web applications. If there are more great web apps that we missed, please tell us so and we will love to update it.