feedgrids.com is now live and ready to be used and abused! Me and Derek Pittsinger worked very hard to collect all the necessary resources and create a site that displays the best of the web in one place!

Here is a bit about the site:

Providing quick access to our favorite creative resources while exposing new and lesser known feeds all in one place.
Our goal is to join the thriving online creative community and become a helpful tool for the user to find inspiration, education, or just be a source of interesting information. We hope that when people use this site it will in turn direct even more traffic or bring in new visitors to the sites that we follow, admire, and get valuable information from.

This site was created while trying to fulfill a personal need. That need was to have all of the creative feeds from all of the sites that we visit on a daily basis in one place; presented in an attractive, visually interesting way and simply categorized to find what we need quickly.

From that need, feedgrids.com was born! Now we want to share this site with the community.

As we continue to work on new features to make the site better for all of us, we hope to hear from you about the features that you would like to see incorporated into feedgrids.com

Visit feedgrids

I ran into this cms this morning, I felt like writing about it even though I only got a chance to play with it for a second or two. They are still in beta but the registration is painless and you get access to the CMS instantly, very cool!

Now I know what you are thinking… Flash, CMS, hmmm… Well I am the same way, but I have to say this one is not half bad from what I have seen so far. Very nice UI, easy to use, easy to build pages and pop ups. They are still working on features like a right click menu etc. But hey, it’s a beta.

Now, I doubt I will ever be using a tool like this, but its good for people wanting to throw something up quick and dirty. I might be recommending this to people that come to me and ask for flash brochure sites since I don’t have much time these days for small brochure sites, and when I do its usually html/css/javascript with a wordpress CMS

Here is an outline of some of FlashMoto’s features as outlined by their website:

Any Flash website can be managed!
Now it became possible to manage, control and update almost any website. There are no restrictions in website design and animation.

No skills required.
All you need is a web browser through which you can make all necessary alterations. No Flash IDE required. Our Flash CMS is compatible with all major browsers.

The Richest Media Library. Built-in image editor.
FlashMoto CMS allows uploading pictures, video, .SWF files. With the help of the built-in Image editor you can edit images in different formats: .JPG and .PNG.
You may resize and crop your images, add text and borders to your images, convert them and much more.

Video, MP3 players Component
With our built-in MP3 player now you can easily change the sound accompaniment of your website. Moreover, FlashMoto CMS was developed with the advantage of video embedment. Using the free video hosting services such as YouTube, Google or Yahoo!, embedding a video even doesn’t require any software. Just copy the embed code from the video hosting site and using a convenient video embed tool paste it into your page.

Custom modules and widgets integration.
You have an ability to develop your own modules as separate swf applications and build them into a site and control panel to improve FlashMoto CMS functionality.

Ability to add unlimited number of pages.
With our simple-to-use tools you can add, edit and delete pages of your Flash website without any efforts.

Advanced WYSIWYG page and pop-up editor.
Editing Flash website is as easy as editing document in Word. Our convenient WYSIWYG Editor gives you an ability to visualize what you are producing.

InfoModule, Video & Image Gallery Component
Our built-in image gallery is extremely simple to maintain. It will help you create a slideshow on your website with no efforts. You won’t need any programming skills to use it. Embedded into your website it will automatically form a splendid slideshow with attractive Flash effects. The way of image presentation is your choice.

SEO optimized Flash Website. Deep Linking. Google Analytics Integration
Similar to HTML websites, your Flash website and all its content is totally indexable by search engines. Each site page has its own unique URL and editable Meta Title. Google Analytics integration tool, robots.txt, 301 SEO redirection, deep linking – all these tools and features will help you to get high ranking, increase your website traffic, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites.

Built-in Forms Component (Form builder)
Our Built-in Forms Component gives you an opportunity to customize any form embedded into your Flash website: you can add and delete form fields, edit field names, change fields types (for example, you can add drop-down lists, check boxes, radio buttons and etc.), change the items on any of the built-in drop-down lists and much more. All data are retrieved and validated in the proper way.

Multiple language support. Custom fonts uploading
FlashMoto CMS supports multiple languages providing you an opportunity to upload custom fonts.

Secure Control Panel
We take all appropriate measures to keep your website protected against dangerous intrusions. And now you can be sure that all your information is stored as securely as possible.

Powerful ActionScript 3.0 API
FlashMoto CMS provides a powerful ActionScript 3.0 application programming interface (API) that can greatly speed the development process and save your time. Moreover, FlashMoto provides multiple ways and built-in components for your own CMS themes and modules development.

FLOW

Oh My! I can barely contain myself, I ran into this app online and I had to share!

Welcome FLOW by GridIron Software. I have outlined some mouth watering features of FLOW:

• Workflow maps visually show all the files connected to and from the file/project you’re working on.
• Visual versioning so you don’t need to append 01, 02, 03 etc to the end of the file you’re working on every time you save a new version.
• Package all the files and save them to a folder.
• Time tracking automatically records how much time you’ve spent on a file/project.
• Tags, tabs, bookmarks, search etc.

Its hard to really explain everything that FLOW does and how it could play a huge part in my workFLOW!

I strongly recommend you watch the tour to get the full impact of this mouth watering app that I will soon own!

I will be honest here, I would love to say that I do all my initial designs and sketches on paper, but I don’t. My mind does not work that way, I go straight into photoshop for my initial ideas, I am very comfortable working with Photoshop, the biggest reason for that, is the ability to move things around quickly, and efficiently, creating layouts and comps that I might not have thought of if I was on paper.

Thats me, I have collaborated with many artists that prefer working with a pen and paper, and they are very good at it, again, thats how their brain works. Plus, it helps to be a good illustrator, something that I am not very strong at.

Now keep in mind, I still use pen and paper for notes, feature lists, initial note taking from a brain storming session etc.

Every designer has their process, and you need to find yours. Its one thing to be inspired by someones work, and another to copy their process hoping you will become as good as them, or have the same success as them etc. It does not work that way. Just take their suggestions, tips, and how to’s and work them into your workflow, that is what I do!

This is not the only way to work, this is one way, I know people that do all their initial web designs in ImageReady, I don’t. Whatever works for you is what you need to use. If you are just starting out, and not sure what your process is or should be, then you need to experiment with new processes, and new tools, until you find the right one for you!

For my coding, and styling needs I use Dreamweaver.

Good Luck!

View Collection

SUMO Paint Introduction

SUMO Paint offers professional and easy to use tools for creating and editing images within a browser. SUMO Paint is a free image editing software that gives you the opportunity to create, edit and comment images online with powerful tools and layer support.

SUMO Paint 1.0 will be published in December 2008. There will be also a local version of it. SUMO Paint website and online version will remain free in the future. There are already over 300 000 unique users and the community is growing super fast at the moment. Thank you so much for joining SUMO Paint.

Ok, I have to admit, this is a pretty slick web app. I think Web applications have come a very long way thanks to Adobe Flex, especially Apps geared towards designers.

SUMO Paint is a hybrid of Photoshop and Illustrator combined. Currently there are a few Web image editors online like Photoshop Express, Picnik etc. But what differentiates SUMO Paint from the rest is the drawing ability and not so much the image editing ability like levels, sharpening and color corrections.

User Experience:

The first think I noticed about SUMO Paint is how quick and easy it is to get into, mostly because its modeled after Photoshop’s interface, while not unique it works, because if you know Photoshop you can just fire it up and start using it instantly.

I am still exploring its limits, so I am not writing an extensive review or anything, I just wanted to share this find with you. (Link found and shared with me by my good friend CJ Woodley. Thanks!)

Enjoy!

Visit SUMO Paint