Google Docs now has free templates for your creative use. One nice one is this iPhone wireframe template for developers.

Check this and more out at Google Docs Templates

A collection of different iPad stands.

Get Netflix on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Just download this free app and you can instantly watch TV shows & movies streaming from Netflix. - It’s part of your Netflix unlimited membership. 

– Watch as often as you want
- Resume watching where you left off on your TV or computer
- Browse movies and manage your instant Queue right from your device

The service does require a Netflix subscription which starts at $8.99/month. The iPhone App seems to support streaming over both Wi-Fi and 3G.

Check out the App here

The Chic51 blog presents products from Chic51.com to help you gather ideas for home decoration.

Tools: WordPress, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Photoshop

The importance and trend of social interaction

More and more companies are now integrating socializing features into their current or re-designed websites. As social networks continue to take over the world, the power of interaction is growing. There are many benefits to having an interactive website and of course for ecommerce websites, this means more revenue.

A reason to come back

By offering a forum, comments, blogs, or any other means of social interaction, you are giving the user another reason to visit your site more frequently, even multiple times a day in some cases. Someone who isn’t looking to shop may check your company blog for updates and happen to stay and purchase something. The user now also gets to have an opinion and voice it to the world as well as interact with others who share the same interests.

Social etiquette

Of course, with every open door to public conversation comes the need for moderation. There will always be someone looking to spend the day using open forums as a means for public out cry. This creates job opportunities for social media moderators for large companies who need people maintaining their social content on a daily basis.

Case study

The Nordstrom website has been static in design for quite some time now. Over the weekend they launched their new look, exploding with lots of great features.

• The site as a whole is a lot more user-friendly in design and function.
• The drop down menus are quicker and less confusing.
• The website offers slideshows with updated vignettes.
• The new “Conversation” section offers Blogs, Forums, and Social Sharing.

Visit The Nordstom Site

1. Prepare Product

To take quality photographs, the complexity and time required will depend greatly on the type of product you’re shooting. Some of the easiest products to photograph are solid objects such as cups and toys;

you may just have to give them a good polish before shooting.

Clothing, textiles and other items that can bend, stretch and wrinkle are much harder to photograph and could require hours of ironing and arranging to get a perfect result. Details, like whether a shirt collar is straight, will determine whether the photographs look like they were shot in a serious studio or by an amateur with a point-and-shoot camera.

Whatever the product, inspect it carefully for tears, stains, chips and other imperfections before beginning.

2. Light

To get a great-looking photo, lighting is crucial. Fortunately, with many products, you don’t need much equipment to get a well-lit balanced exposure. For objects the size of a digital camera or smaller, you can use an EZcube light tent with two small 30-watt bulbs on either side. For larger items, such as clothing, two 60-watt soft boxes on either side of the product should suffice. Also consider using a light reflector to get rid of any shadows and obvious highlights.

3. Set Your Camera

Watch out for noticeable light reflections on shiny surfaces. Even though most product photos look very staged, you don’t want yours to look too artificial.

Obviously, you’ll need a camera to take pictures, so make sure you have one. It doesn’t have to be the best or most expensive on the market, but it should at least have manual focus and shutter and aperture controls. These are all standard on most SLR cameras.

Read the rest at Smashing Magazine

Phil Simon is an independent technology consultant, author, writer, and dynamic public speaker for hire.

Tools: WordPress, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Photoshop

Finding that perfect spot to place something without creating unnecessary clutter can be difficult. This applies to any design. Whether you need to place a website advertisement or shirt pocket. The best ideas are the ones that work the problem by combining the solution with what is already present without adding more.

Don’t add more space on your website to place the ad if it means messing up the design. Find an area or shift things around to make the ad fit in.

Example: Retrovelo Frame Bag

This bag is placed perfectly centered on the bike. It doesn’t require extra parts to hold it and it doesn’t extend the bike frame or take away from the design.

Every once in a while someone comes out with a design so great, it makes you wonder why this wasn’t invented sooner.

The Bike Porter is a bike handlebar with the front rack built in.

Upside - Having it all be one part makes the design stronger and have less parts to deal with.

Downside - heavy and expensive at $225.

Dimensions:

• 19.7″ wide
• 16.7″ long
• 9.0″ tall

Weight

• 3.6 pounds

Material

• Heat treated 6061 Aluminum Alloy tubing and rods.

Colors available

• Silver
• Black
• White (Fall 2010)
• Gold
• Pink
• Blue

Haul up to 33 pounds.

20 Great examples of simplistic logo designs from webdesignledger

80 Useful PSD Templates for Web Designers

From Noupe

40 Colorful and Abstract iPad Wallpapers to boost your creativity.
From WebDesignDepot

This bottomless bowl really caught my attention. It is a true presentation of minimalist design. Who needs the bottom of the bowl anyway?

Very nice work by  Elizabeth

Cordez. Check out her site for some more pieces.

And……….they tapped into the battery charger market.

Most stylish batteries you’ll see on the market. Just look at these little ones.

The Apple Battery Charger

• 10 years life span
• Charge lasts “long time”
• Comes with 6 batteries
• Sleek design
• $29

I personally love the trackpad on my macbook pro.  My ergonomic mouse is catching dust in the corner. Why? Because everything is done so much faster when I swipe and scroll. Sure, it may not be the most comfortable position for your hand, but it sure is more intuitive and quick. Much like a touch screen.

Today Apple released the new Magic Trackpad for those who are over the “magic mouse” and want more room to move.

Whoopi Goldberg revealed on “The View” that her frustration with the new iPhone caused her to “murder” it. After experiencing reception problems during a phone interview, Goldberg said that she opened her car door and smashed the device to pieces. Video inside.

iPhone 4 catches on fire

Apple’s new iPhone 4 has been the heated topic since it’s launch just last month. With the white version coming out later in July, some may wonder if sales will drop, or if consumers will run out and purchase this apparently unprepared model.

The new story really puts the cherry on top of this meltdown.

A source from AT&T brought the new story to the attention of Boygeniusreport.

“The customer wanted to exchange the iPhone — obviously — for a new, non-charred unit however the AT&T store in question was out of stock. An Apple Store did confirm to our AT&T connection that this did appear to be a defective USB port and not some sort of user error. Our source went onto say that the phone bezel was extremely hot (obviously), and it slightly burned the customers hand. The USB port in the phone was slightly melted and the cord was badly melted” – Read the full story

FTP On The Go lets you securely log into your server* from anywhere using your iPhone or iPod touch!

Download files and use FTP On The Go’s built in text editor to fix text right on your iPhone. Find and Replace features make it a snap. Click the Save button to upload your changes back to the server and you’re done. You can even change file permissions (CHMOD) on the server to manage your website from anywhere.

You can view document files on the FTP server: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, and Image files are all supported. You can download and view these documents right on the iPhone’s screen–or save them to your iPhone to view later.

FTP On The Go can store files you download on your iPhone or iPod touch, so you can view or edit them later. Version 2 even includes file sharing with built in FTP and Web Servers so you can view and add files on your iPhone from a computer, or even another iPhone.

FTP On The Go can upload images from your photo library or take a picture using the iPhone’s camera and upload it immediately right within the program, even resizing the image to fit what you need for your website.

Bookmarks make it easy to visit all your sites. All the usual operations (create file, create directory, rename file, delete file, move file) are supported. And even advanced features are included, like “Mode Z” support to compress data on-the-fly (a feature that isn’t even in all desktop FTP clients!)
A master password can be set for FTP On The Go to protect your valuable server login information.