The word ‘bokeh’ derives from the Japanese for ‘blur’ or ‘haze’, and in photography describes the effect found in out-of-focus regions of images. Different lens designs, aperture shapes and sizes, and various depths of field have profound effects on the type and extent of bokeh produced in a photograph. Bokeh happens in the areas of an image beyond the depth of focus; by playing with focus and lens, photographers can create some stunning images.

This post brings together 25 examples of incredible bokeh photography, and concludes with a summary of great tutorials where you can learn bokeh techniques for yourself.

Bokeh Day. This image is an excellent example of bokeh, with the metallic effect on the bubbles and receding blur of lights offering a sense of depth and dimension. (via DW212)

Bokeh Butterfly. Bokeh photography can transport the viewer to an almost alien world of scale and color, such as this beautifully composed image of a butterfly. (via Aussiegall)

Cactus Needle Bokeh. This macro image of the miniscule hairs on a cactus uses an extremely narrow field of focus to achieve the sensual bokeh effect. (via Kevin Dooley)

Forget-me-not’s. Kevin Law’s bokeh image is another to take nature as its subject matter, with the pretty forget-me-nots’ summer blossoms set against the blurred greens of an English meadow. (via Kevin Law)

A Cup of Bokeh, Please. This superb shot juxtaposes a sharp focused mug against blurred lights for a touch of bubbling bokeh. (via Shermeee)

Sweet Disposition. Photographer Josh Liba likes to take portraits of this character called Yushi in various settings. In this case, she finds herself in a field of corn stubble at sunset, with a delightful combination of color and soft focus. (via Josh Liba)

The Smell of Bokeh. Niffty’s beautifully rendered photo captures the play of golden light on plants, cobwebs and sparkling dewdrops. (via Niffty)

When Bokeh and Alcohol Mix. A close-up shot of Christmas tree lights, using a quarter-second exposure, resulted in this colorful spiral. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Christmas. Another Christmas-themed bokeh shot that verges into the realms of abstraction, with lights reduced to discs of sublime color. (via Kevin Dooley)

Bokeh Spiral. Many of the spirals found in nature are based on the logarithmic principles of the Golden Section, such as the receding body of a plant as seen in this bokeh image. (via Eriwst)

Happy Bokeh Wednesday!. It took a lot of patience to achieve this image, but finally the photographer managed to capture the fine detail of a falling leaf’s desiccated flesh against the blurred autumnal colours of the background. (via Jesse Kruger)

Bokeh Snow Tree. Pink Sherbet’s atmospheric shot captures a blizzard blowing through the branches of a tree in Massachusetts, with the blurred snowflakes offering a sense of depth and movement. (via Pink Sherbet)

Typical Elbe Bokeh?. This maritime image uses bokeh effects to create a sense of scale and distance with the form of a freight-laden ship pleasingly blurring into the background. (via Eriwst)

Bokeh Mu’a. The feathered light in DucDigital’s bokeh photo has an ethereal, dream-like quality. (via DucDigital)

2009 Illuminate Yaletown. Bokeh photographs often feature greater blurring on lights that are further from the camera, sometimes producing startling geometric effects, such as this shot by Zen-Shooter. (via Zen-Shooter)

Lonely Night of Bokeh. The combination of blur, water, tonality and colouration in this image creates a melancholy yet alluring atmosphere. (via Studio494)

Bokeh!. This image was captured when the photographer visited Shivamogga, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The corrugated iron roof, rivulets of water and glistening, blurred vegetation are characteristic of the subcontinent’s monsoon season. (via Mynameisharsha)

Bokeh Burger. Robert S. Donovan’s tasty bokeh shot has a sizzling burger set against a barbecue’s blurry burning embers. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Sheltering Angel. A hermit crab shelters inside its shell, with the masterfully handled bokeh effect on glistening pebbles creating a sense of sunlit depth. (via Lel4nd)

Bokehlicious NY Streets. DeaPeaJay expertly handles the balance between the tree in the foreground with the lights of New York behind, achieving just the right level of focus and blur. (via DeaPeaJay)

Sunset Bokeh. Light on water has long been a favorite subject matter for photographers, and a touch of bokeh produces a particularly sedate aesthetic. (via Tanakawho)

Summer in Bokeh. This portrait captures children under sprinkler showers in the summer sun, with a pleasing bokeh effect on the joyful face in the background. (via Wendy Piersall)

Double Sweet Bokeh. This fresh photo has a bokeh blur on the polka dot background and a strawberry in the foreground, with the central fruit’s flesh picked out in stunning detail.

Bokeh Billiard. Lel4nd’s bokeh shot makes great use of depth, colour and light to capture a cool pool hall aesthetic. (via Lel4nd)

Bokeh Photography Tutorials

There are plenty of tutorials available on the internet where photographers can learn bokeh skills and apply them to their work. The effects can be produced using professional camera equipment, pocket cameras or digitally in applications such as Photoshop. Below is a brief summary of the best tutorials, covering the key areas of bokeh photography.

• DSLR Bokeh Tutorial – Roberts Donovan sets out in simple steps the techniques of bokeh photography with digital SLR cameras. This informative lesson acknowledges that bokeh skills are very simple to pick up, and equally as difficult to master.
• Pocket Camera Bokeh Tutorial – Following on from the previous tutorial, this lesson explains how to apply bokeh techniques to pocket digital cameras. Once again, simple steps layout the principles of achieving bokeh effects, paying particular attention to overcoming the automatic functions of point-and-shoot cameras.
• DIY – Create Your Own Bokeh – This is a really neat tutorial explaining how to create effects using specially cut apertures attached to lens, effectively equipping you with a DIY bokeh kit. Once you’ve mastered the techniques, the possibilities open up for endless experimentation with camera settings and different shapes and sizes of custom-cut apertures.
• Awesome Digital Bokeh Effect in Photoshop – In this tutorial, Fabio Sasso explains in nine easy-to-follow steps the process of digitally creating bokeh-style effects in Photoshop. The lesson is principally aimed at producing wallpapers, but once the technique is learned it can be applied to other types of image creation.
• Colourful Bokeh Effect in Pixelmator – As in the previous tutorial, this lesson shows how to create attractive bokeh-themed wallpapers, but using Pixelmator instead of Photoshop. The process is simpler in Pixelmator, so you can quickly grasp the skills to make bokeh effects and apply them to a range of digital contexts.

Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS). You can build a whole website using Drupal. You can create your own design (theme) for your website or you can download templates which are made for Drupal from the internet.

There are hundreds of Drupal themes which you can find on the internet but not all of them are good looking. So, this time I have collected the 50 best looking Drupal 6 themes I have found. The newest version of Drupal is 7 but at the moment the most popular version of Drupal is still is 6 and that’s why in this article I have collected only themes for Drupal 6. All of my collected themes are free to use, so feel free to download any of themes you like the most. Enjoy!

Beach

Good looking Drupal theme. It has a nice underwater feeling. [Demo] [Download]

Notechoas

Interesting piece of art. Background has a big role in this theme. [Demo] [Download]

RootCandy

This is very cool and great looking theme for Drupal’s administration section. Everything looks clean and shiny and those icons look awesome. [Demo] [Download]

Monochrome

Very stylish theme for a blog. It has a cool looking left sidebar for entry dates and also very good looking navigation menu. Love the rounded corners. [Demo] [Download]

Magwood

Simple but beautiful Drupal theme with a nice header for your blog or portfolio. [Demo] [Download]

Emporium

Love the style of this theme. This theme is not complicated but it has a great, simple design. [Demo] [Download]

Frankincense

Great Drupal template for your blog. It’s not complicated and also isn’t very simple. [Demo] [Download]

Chasmogamous

Very friendly website design. Good looking sky for the header and grass for the content. [Demo] [Download]

Blogsmith

Another great template for a blog. Bright green color in the background looks awesome. [Demo] [Download]

Scruffy

Great Drupal theme for a blog. This header looks brilliant. [Demo] [Download]

Grassland

This theme looks nice. There’s a positive atmosphere inside this theme. [Demo] [Download]

Coolweb

Great theme for a corporate website! [Demo] [Download]

Cleanfolio

Beautiful theme for a small and simple website. [Demo] [Download]

Abstract

Beautiful theme for a blog or portfolio website! [Demo] [Download]

Fusion Theme

Clean and simple theme which looks great! [Demo] [Download]

A3 Atlantis

Very interesting theme. Could be good for a corporate website. [Demo] [Download]

Orange

Very well made and great looking theme for a social networking site! [Demo] [Download]

Arclite Theme

Clean and simple theme which could be great for a blog. [Demo] [Download]

Fields 2009 template

Good looking theme for a corporate website. [Demo] [Download]

NonZeroRed DTB

Just a simple and good looking theme. Could be implemented for many types of websites. [Demo] [Download]

Elements Theme

Interesting Drupal theme. Could look good for a portfolio website. [Demo] [Download]

A Cold Day

Nice looking theme which has three color versions available. [Demo] [Download]

Ebizon RedFire

If you want just a clean and simple website then this is a theme you are looking for. [Demo] [Download]

Acquia Marina

Cool theme for many types of websites. [Demo] [Download]

24. Alek 2.0

Simple Drupal theme for a simple website. [Demo] [Download]

Twittish

If you would like that your website would look like Twitter then you have found the best solution for you! [Demo] [Download]

AD Redoable

Simple theme which would look great for a portfolio website. [Demo] [Download]

Austin Zen Sub Theme

If you want just a simple website without any flashy, shiny elements then this simple theme is for you. Zen theme is one of the best themes to use for a basis making your own theme. [Demo] [Download]

Retromania

Retro style theme for your classy website. [Demo] [Download]

Absynthe

Very cozy theme which uses mostly warm colors. [Demo] [Download]

Deco

Elegant theme for your blog. [Demo] [Download]

Zbench

Simple theme which looks very elegant. [Demo] [Download]

Motion

Not very complicated theme with a beautiful background. [Demo] [Download]

Mystique

Drupal theme with a great navigation menu. It also has nice bright green speech bubbles for headings on the right sidebar. [Demo] [Download]

Pixel

Great theme if you like dark colors. This theme has an abstract background. [Demo] [Download]

Wilderness

Cool theme for those who love nature. Simple but beautiful design. [Demo] [Download]

Pinkflower

Very stylish theme which uses pink and bright blue color mostly. Flower on the right side also looks great. [Demo] [Download]

Naturescharm

This template looks great because of its cool looking header and bright yellow color. [Demo] [Download]

BlogBuzz

Stunning Drupal theme! Everything is so clean, very well made. Could be a great theme for your portfolio web site or a blog. [Demo] [Download]

Magazeen

Great looking theme! Just clean and shiny. [Demo] [Download]

Gardening

Beautiful cartoon-style Drupal theme. Great piece of art! [Demo] [Download]

Acquia Prosper

Clean, good looking theme for an e-commerce website. [Demo] [Download]

Mosaic

Drupal 6 theme with brilliant style. Check out the search box – nice! [Demo] [Download]

Numerology

Very elegant design. Header image looks brilliant! Background for navigation menu is in bright green color which looks good. [Demo] [Download]

Abrasive

This is very interesting design. If you want a design for your blog which looks different to others then this could be your choice. [Demo] [Download]

BrewedCoffee

If you are a coffee lover then this theme would be suitable for you. [Demo] [Download]

Oxidation

Like the style of this design. It’s very simple but the header with its yellow color and shiny elements looks great. [Demo] [Download]

Interlude

Very simple and beautiful design which doesn’t need anything else to be added. [Demo] [Download]

Excess

Brilliant design! Love the stripes for the header and also the green speech bubbles for the logo and headings are a very cool design element. [Demo] [Download]

Greeny Grass

Great theme with beautiful style. Grass which divides header and content looks good. [Demo] [Download]

The color green holds positive connotations for most people and green logos are super popular at the moment. Green is a symbol for environmentalism and our love affair with green stretches back to ancient Egypt where the color was symbolic of resurrection and immortality (the god Osiris was supposedly green skinned). Today, environmentally friendly companies, web 2.0 companies, organic food shops, juice bars, salad bars and fruit companies all love a good green logo. Green logos are in vogue and these companies are driving the trend.

Below are 30 examples of creative green logos. The examples include an organic coffee company logo, environmentally free LED lights and ‘clean integration’. The designers below have also successfully applied green to consulting, physiotherapy and even programming (see Code Fish and The Coding Frog below). These logos are fresh, upbeat and, hopefully, inspirational.

Suggest read: 18 Beautiful Web Designs That Emphasize Green.

30 Beautiful Green Logo Designs

Green Labs

Code Fish

Marshalls pet store

The Coding Frog

Green Apple Transfers

Living Heirloom

Arch Partners

Versus

Sertifi

RPJ Consulting

Chumu visual communication

BFM(Bibliotheque Forum Meyrin)

Leetenda Urbana

Clean Integration

Evotweet

Eternaleds

Pure Oils

Eight

See Creative

Bio Cento

John Milander Architects

Meadville Land Service

Helping Hands For Pets

Hutan Consulting

Eco Bikes

Realty Connection Inc

Toronto Bodyworks

Thymes

Swing Studios

Forma Humana

So what’s your favorite shared hosting provider?

Vacation was great. Did a lot of traveling. Not much trouble for the entire trip.
I read that the BP leak will make gas prices skyrocket. Makes me want to go green but I don’t like walking and do like AC. Maybe a smaller car is in the cards.

We’ve previously showcased some really cool paper sculpturing artwork; today we are going to show you another type of paper-related artwork. It is something we are all familiar with – Origami. Origami is an art of paper folding, and paper cranes are probably what we’ll thought of when it comes to origami.

Origami originates from Japan, and in Japanese, Ori means paper, and kami(gami) means folding. There are various types of Origami, respectively action, modular, wet-folding and pureland. Today, we are going to show you some of the best examples of these paper made wonders.

Here’s a showcase of 70 beautiful and creative origami created by fans all over the world. Full list after jump.

Grulla. Designed by Roman Diaz and Daniel Naranjo. Folded from 37*37cm MC treated tissue. (via Kekremsi)

Origami Jedi. Folded by Phillip West from a single uncut square. Modified from Satoshi Kamiya’s Wizard. (via PhillipWest)

Origami Tarantula. A really impressive model designed by Robert Lang, folded from a square of a tissue-foil paper. (via Rodrigo Zen)

Divine Dragon. Masterpieces of origami dragons, famous Bahamut – Divine Dragon by Satoshi Kamiya. Folded by Brian Chan. (via Chosetec)

Yoda Origami. Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata. Folded by Phillip West from Lokta sandpaper paper back coated to tissue paper. (via PhillipWest)

Ancient Dragon. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya. Wet folded from mulberry tissue 136×136cm. (via Mabona Origami)

Life Size Onitsuka Tiger. Created for Asics lounge in Berlin. This huge origami sculpture dimensions are: 270×110x60cm. (via Mabona Origami)

Praying Mantis (female). Designed and folded by Sipho Mabona. Wet folded form one uncut square of shikibu kizukishki kozo (handmade) colored with calligraphic ink. (via Mabona Origami)

Gryphon. Interesting and complex example of gryphon origami. Folded from two types of paper, which makes this a very furnace origami. (via Guspath)

Werewolf. Another great example of origami by Guspath. Folded from 50cm square golden foil paper. (via Guspath)

Little Bird. Sweet yellow bird. Designed by Kamiya Satoshi, folded by Sin cynic. (via Sin cynic)

Dedalus. Red statue of Daedalus. Designed and folded by Origamirizzo. (via Origamirizzo)

Mammoth. This model was folded from diagrams. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya. (via Finwych)

Ringed Tailed Lemur. Folded from MC treated black tissue. Designed and folded by Origami Roman. (via Origami Roman)

Vampire Bat. Vampire bat by Dao Cuong Quyet. Folded from 60cm square paper. (via Baldorigami)

Phoenix. Phoenix origami at the exhibition in Toronto Airport. Created by Chow Hin Chung, folded by Alex Yue (via Sftrajan)

Fox . Folded from CP in tanteidan magazine 119. (via KingOri)

Chimpance. Designed and folded by Tanaka Masashi, folded from CP. (via Alexori)

Water Buffalo. Designed by Nguyen Hung Cuong, folded by Sin cynic. (via Sin cynic)

Minotaur. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya, folded by Imperfekshun from 64×64 cm tissue foil. (via Imperfekshun)

Whale. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya, folded by Eric Madrigal from brown 40×40 cm paper with acrylic paints. (via Eric Madrigal)

Hermit Crab Origami. Folded by Brian Chan from a square of laminated Japanese mulberry paper. (via Chosetec)

Owl. Designed by Katsuta Kyohei. Origami size is 50×50 cm. (via Vetal Origami)

Reindeer. Designed by Katsuta Kyohei. Folded from brown paper. (via Vetal Origami)

Pig Nose. WilChua was refolding his pig and got a great result. (via WilChua)

Dollar Toilet Bowl. Folded from one 1 dollar bill. (via Orudorumagi11)

Iron Man. Designed by Brian Chan. Folded from an uncut square.

Angel fish. Few small angel fish origami folded from colored paper. (via Claudia M&M)

Origami Yoda. Yoda stands at 11.5cm tall and was folded from an A3 square- approximately 30×30cm. Designed and folded by Antzpantz. (via Antzpantz)

Bull. From Mythological Creatures and the Chinese Zodiac in Origami. (via Himanshu)

Origami Roses. Gorgeous very realistic, colored origami flower bouquet. (via Amandakay82)

Elephant . Origami Elephant folded from brown paper. Designed by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Origami highback chairs. Some of the elements for your work place – origami highback chairs. (via Jonmatthew Photography)

Origami Car. Small cute origami car folded from colored paper. Designed and folded by Midoriissa. (via Midoriissa)

Rat. Small rat origami folded from newspaper. Designed and folded by Eric Joisel. (via JuLi-Design)

Seated Cat. Seated Cat folded from brown paper. Designed and folded by David Brill. (via Himanshu)

Origami horse. Horse origami from the Origami Now exhibition at the Peabody/Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. (via Philocrites)

Rose and leaf folded. Kawasaki Rose and leaf folded by J.V. Page of Origami Mitra. (via Bkwebb)

Origami Lion. Origami Lion from Satoshi Kamiya’s exhibition at the 40th British Origami Society Convention. Folded by Satoshi Kamiya. (via Gaharoni)

High-Heel Shoes. Red stylish high-heel shoes. Designed and folded by Anthony. (via Antzpantz)

Frog. Origami Frog designed by Michael LaFosse. Folded from from cotton rags by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Penguins. All origami penguins are folded from one A4 paper. (via bh3o81)

Bottlenose Dolphin. Origami Bottlenose Dolphin designed by Syahmir from uncut square paper. (via Syahmir)

Squirrel. Origami in the Origami Exhibition in Mumbai, India. Folded by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Anciente Dragon. Designed by Kamiya Satoshi, folded by Hugoakitaya from papel manteiga. (via Hugoakitaya)

Banana. Designed and folded by Andrew Hudson from yellow paper. (via Origami Weekly)

Honeycomb. Created by John McKeever, folded from a hexagon of elephant hide. (via Melisande)

Peacock. Created by Jun Maekawa, folded from 15cm tissue foil. (via Origami_8)

Jucumari. Origami folded from a square of Lamali/Banana paper. Folded by Origoku. (via Origoku)

Phoenix . Origami folded from a 16″ piece of tissue foil. (via J0nB0n)

Origami Swan . Designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki. Folded by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

The Dance . Designed and folded by H.T.Quyet from 1 uncut right triangle – half of a square size 34×34 cm. (via ORI_Q)

Shumakov Origami Kitten . Kitten origami design is created by Katrin and Yuri Shumakov. Origami size approximately 5 cm. (via Himanshu)

Shin Tanaka. Origami designed and folded by Usagirondo. (via Usagirondo)

Shrimp . Designed and folded by Yagorigamania from 60 x 60 cm tissue paper. (via Yagorigamania)

Shachihoko . Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata, folded from tissue foil made with white glue. (via Kekremsi)

Phalacrognathus muelleri. Designed and folded by Sipho Mabona. Wet folded form one uncut square of origamido paper. (via Mabona Origami)

Oriland Kitten. Cute kitten origami original design by Oriland. (via Mammaoca2008)

Origami Gundam . Complex creative Gundam origami, designed and folded by origami RXMAN. (via Origami RXMAN)

Miss Souris . Cute creative origami mouse, folded from bright colored paper. (via 5500km)

Lion . Designed and folded by H.T.Quyet, folded from 1 uncut square of double crumpled paper. (via ORI_Q)

Kabuto Mushi Origami . Folded by Brian Chan from an uncut square of origamido paper. (via Chosetec)

House. Prototype for a comisson by a advertising company. (via Mabona Origami)

Football . Created from a 19.5 inch square of chestnut lokta backed with rayon paper. (via Oriholic Jared)

Flying Katydid . Origami is designed and folded by Sipho Mabona, folded from aprox. 16 inch of shikibu gampi-shi then wet shaped with water. (via Mabona Origami)

Scorpion. Designed and folded by Nicolas Gajardo Henriquez for latinamerican origami congress in Bogota. (via [~Nic))

Donkey . Cute donkey origami folded from black paper. (via 5.i.u)

Bull Moose. Origami is designed by Robert Lang and folded by Phillip West. (via PhillipWest)

Lamb . Folded from hand-decorated elephant hide paper. (via Joseph Wu Origami)

St George and the Dragon . Origami scene designed and folded by Dave Brill. (via Happyfolding)

Llopio’s Moment of Truth . Origami scene – Llopio’s Moment of Truth. Designed and folded by Neal Elias. (via Happyfolding)

Apple sold more than 1 million copies of iPads in the first 3 months. This gadget is definitely more than just a larger version of iPhone or iPod touch. With 4x the screen of an iPhone, the iPad’s display is ideal for reading and for presentations.

In today’s post, we’d like to highlight some really useful iPad applications that might replace the things you do daily with your laptop or netbook. With a piece of iPad and these applications, you probably don’t need to carry a laptop around. Here are 30 useful iPad applications for Business and Presentation you might find handy on your next project pitch or business trip.

Full list after jump.

Presentations

Keynote
Keynote is the most powerful presentation app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love on the Mac, but completely reworked from the ground up for iPad.

Corkulous
Corkulous is incredible idea board for iPad to collect, organize, and share your ideas that feel completely natural.

Power Presenter
This application is used for Presentation. If you save the powerpoint as PDF file, this app will help you do the presentation on projector. It will automatically detect the projector and send the signal to theprojector using the VGA cable.

Sadun’s Whiteboard
Transform your iPad into a presentation screen with Whiteboard. Whiteboard lets you connect to a TV or projection system using an Apple VGA or composite/component video-out cable and draw directly to an external screen using standard whiteboard markers and erasers.

Graph, Charts, Diagram & Statistic

Analytics HD
The premier app for Google Analytics, Analytics App, now debuts on the iPad as Analytics HD! See charts and reports like you’ve never seen them before, and share them in a meeting with full screen charts!

OmniGraffle
Need to create a quick diagram, process chart, page layout, website wireframe, or graphic design? With OmniGraffle, your iPad touch screen is your canvas (or graph paper, or whiteboard, or cocktail napkin.

OmniGraphSketcher
Use OmniGraphSketcher for iPad to make elegant and precise graphs in seconds, whether you have specific data to report or a concept to explain.

Idea Boards
A simple easy way to put your ideas somewhere. Idea Boards right now offers 4 unique drawing surfaces.

Numbers
Numbers is the most innovative spreadsheet app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love for the Mac, completely reworked from the ground up for iPad. Tap the bright Multi-Touch display to create compelling, great-looking spreadsheets in minutes.

Easy Chart HD
Simple, Easy chart creator for iPad – EasyChart.

Instaviz
INSTAVIZ is diagram sketching for your iPhone. Sketch some rough shapes and lines and Instaviz magically turns them into beautifully laid-out diagrams.

Roambi – Visualizer
Roambi’s cutting edge mobile dashboards let you touch, turn, analyze and share your company’s latest information on any iPhone or iPad – keeping you connected to your business, anytime and anywhere.

Planning

Priority Matrix
Priority Matrix is an incredibly convenient and powerful "to do list" tool that uses proven time management methods. You can visually and intuitively manage to do items, lists, ideas, project, plans, and activities.

iThoughtsHD (Free/Paid App)
iThoughtsHD is a mind mapping tool for the iPad. Mindmapping enables you to visually organise your thoughts, ideas and information.

Page & Documents

Pages
Pages is the most beautiful word processing app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love for the Mac, completely reworked from the ground up for iPad.

Dropbox
Dropbox is the easiest way to sync and share your files online and across computers.

FTP On The Go PRO
An FTP client for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. View and edit HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/ASP, or other files on your server with its built in editor to change your website from anywhere. View images and documents (JPG, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, etc) too.

SugarSync
All of your data at your fingertips…anytime, anywhere, from your iPad. With SugarSync, instantly access cloud-synced files, photos and music from all your computers. View files and photos, stream music, and share files (and even complete folders) with friends and colleagues – no tethering required.

Dragon Dictation
Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard.

The Wall Street Journal (Free)
Experience The Wall Street Journal’s award winning coverage, blending the best of print and online. Touch the stories that matter to you most, get latest news updates and market data throughout the day, and save your favorite articles and sections for later.

PrintCentral
Print direct to most WiFi printers, or to ALL printers and ANY document type via your Mac/PC, even over 3G. View, store & print email, attachments, documents, files, photos, contacts, web pages and copied items from other Apps, on your iPad.

Meetings

MightyMeeting
With MightyMeeting you can store your presentations in the cloud and access them anytime and anyplace from your iPhone or iPad. You can share these presentations via email, blog, Twitter, or Facebook. Most importantly, you can start or join online web meetings directly from your iPad or iPhone.

WebEx
Attend WebEx meetings on your iPad, wherever you are! Use this application to get the full meeting experience with simultaneous data and audio. Don’t just listen in to a meeting. Join in.

GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is the easiest and most convenient way to attend online meetings – and now you can take it to go! Download the free app and join a meeting on your iPad in seconds just by tapping the link in your invitation email. View slide presentations, design mockups, spreadsheets, reports – whatever meeting presenters choose to share on-screen.

iMeetingPad
iMeetingPad replaces the standard notepad you used to bring to meetings before the iPad era dawned. Does your notepad connect to the projector? Can your notepad bring the applause or laugh track? Can it wake dozing colleagues with a cock crow? iMeetingPad can!

Skype
Call your Skype contacts wherever you may be – either on 3G or WiFi. It’s completely free to call people on Skype over Wifi and free on 3G until the end of 2010.

Sketching & Designs

SketchyPad
This app will make designers, programmers, interface designers life much easier. Easy-to-use interface and a lot of various stencils will help you to mockup any web sites and apps interfaces.

iMockups
Mockups provides designers and developers with the ability to quickly draft wireframes for their websites and iPhone/iPad apps. Created exclusively for the iPad, iMockups combines a beautiful interface with intuitive functionality, taking full advantage of the breakthrough touchscreen device.

Doodle Buddy
Doodle Buddy for iPad is the most fun you can have with your finger—-heck, it’s the most fun you can have with two, three or four fingers! Finger paint with thousands of colors and drop in playful stamps.

Layers – Pro Edition
Want to doodle, draw on photos, or paint a masterpiece on your new iPad? Look no further! Layers packs in everything you need to be creative on the go. The pro edition of Layers provides more brushes, more layers, and more advanced layer operations than the standard edition.

Inactivity and age, combined with my most recent visit to the doctor, has finally struck the crowning blow. I have to go on a diet. low sodium diet. Nothing tastes good without salt, or some kind of seasoning.

Salt is bad for you on a number of levels but by the time the doctor was finished with me I was afraid of salt, sugar, and anything else that might add something to the bland taste of un-seasoned food.

Oh, I’ll get used to it. Maybe I will like it before its all said and done. More excercise, better diet, lose some weight, find some resolve I had in abundance years ago…

We’ve reached part three of the SEO guide series. So far we’ve looked at:

• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, Part I – Keyword research and your general approach to an SEO strategy and,
• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, Part II – How you should think about developing your site and creating content.

Now it’s time to look at link building, which as much as anything will determine where your pages rank for different queries.

We’ll also take a look at analytics so you can understand how your SEO efforts have been working and gain insights into how to improve them. Unless you’re measuring results you’re basically throwing things into the wind and hoping they land where you want. Analytics will let us know which way the wind is blowing and point us to jet streams to so our SEO lands where we want.

Let’s start talking about links and what makes one link more valuable than another.

4. Link Building

Links more than anything will determine where your pages rank. If you build a search friendly site and generate incoming links to your pages you’e going to get search traffic. The two main questions with links are where do you get them and which are the best links to get. Let’s tackle the latter question first.

Which are the best links to get?

Google popularized the idea of links as a ranking factor. Links are at the heart of Google’s PageRank algorithm. At it’s core the idea was that a link counts as a vote or recommendation by one page for another. Over time this has evolved quite a bit, but I think it’s still useful to think about links as votes or recommendations.

Consider the following scenario – You have 2 neighbors. One is the local plumber and the other is Albert Einstein. If you ask each a general question who’s answer do you think you’d be more likely to trust? Odds are you’re going to trust Einstein’s answer because you know he’s a pretty smart guy and probably knows the answer to a lot of things. Einstein likely has more general authority in your eyes than the plumber as a go to guy for answers.

Let’s say instead of a general question you have a very specific question about the pipes running through your kitchen. Now who’s answer are you going to trust? Probably the plumber. Einstein knows a lot, but chances are the plumber knows more about plumbing. The plumber has more topical authority when it comes to answers about plumbing.

Where do you get them?

Now think about the above analogy in terms of links. Some sites and pages have a lot of general authority. Think cnn.com, whitehouse.gov. wikipedia.org. A link from these sites likely carries a lot of general authority. People trust these sites and more importantly search engines trust these sites. What do they specifically know about web design though?

How about sites like smashingmagazine.com, the tutsplus family of sites, or hongkiat.com? These sites have topical authority around web design and web development. You would probably trust advice from them on the topic of design and development over the whitehouse.gov site.

I’ll ask again which links have more value for your site?

Page Rank

PageRank (PR) is Google’s idea of measuring authority, more specifically general authority. The PR of a web page is based on the PR of the pages linking to that page. However PageRank isn’t the end all and be all of search ranking. First the PR you and I see is not the true PR of a web page. We see what’s called toolbar PR (TBPR). Google updates it 3 or 4 times a year so most of the time it’s out of date. It’s also on a different scale than true PageRank and Google’s been known to edit the PR of certain sites for various reasons.

PageRank is still important and it’s still part of what goes into determining where a web page will rank, but know that if you’re chasing PR you’re going about things the wrong way. PR is only one factor among hundreds and it’s also a Google specific metric. It has nothing to do with how well your pages rank at any other search engine. At best it’s a quick and dirty measure of the authority Google sees in a page or site.

So what are the best links to get? Well it depends. It depends on the topic of your site and it depends on the competition around that topic. Links from the Wikipedia and CNN are always going to be good, however the link from the authority in your niche is probably even better.

As a general rule the harder it is to acquire a link the better, because that difficultly reduces the chances of your competition getting the same link and that difficulty likely enhances the authority a search engine sees in the link and consequently your page and site.

As a site note: Page Rank is named after Google co-founder Larry Page. Many people mistakenly believe it’s named after page as in web page and think page rank is the same as where your page ranks in search results. Nope. Page is for Larry Page.

Anchor Text, Nofollow, and Link Diversity

There are three more ideas we should discuss when talking about the quality of links:

1. The anchor text of the links in question,
2. Links with the nofollow attribute applies, and
3. The diversity of where those links come from.

Anchor Text
You probably know that anchor text is the clickable text that becomes the links. Those words and even the words around the link itself give an indication of what the page is voting for. If the anchor text linking to you says “web design” it will likely help you rank better for the keyphrase “web design” than if the anchor text said “click here.” Keywords in anchor text are a good signal for ranking.

Nofollow
nofollow is essentially a way to link to a web page while at the same time letting search engines know you’re not voting or recommending that page. Links with nofollow applied are not supposed to pass any link juice or link value. They shouldn’t therefore have any benefit in regards to SEO. However any link is still an avenue into your site.

If CNN told me they would link to my home page, but the link would have nofollow applied, I’d still be very happy to have that link. Many eyeballs would see it and hopefully many of them would click through to my site.

Link Diversity
Earlier I mentioned the concept of a link as a vote. In an election how many votes does one person get. Corruption aside it’s one vote per person. With web pages and websites there is likely a diminishing return when we’re talking about links back to your site. Consider two cases.

1. 1,000 links pointing into your site all from a single website
2. 100 links pointing into your site, 5 each from 20 different sites

The latter is probably going to have a greater impact. In the first case there’s no diversity in the links. In the second case there are more sites “voting” for you. Ideally links into your site or page should come from a variety of sources.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Diversity from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Quick Summary of Link Building

1. Build trust and authority in your site by acquiring links from general and topical trusted and authority sites.
2. Build trust and authority in a single page on your site by acquiring links from general and topical trusted and authority web pages.
3. Try to get links with variations of your main keyphrase in the anchor text.
4. Seek links from a diverse set of sites and pages.
5. Sometimes it’s simply a numbers game. More links or better more link juice, PR, or whatever you want to call it, is better. Quality though, is usually preferred to quantity.

Internal links (links from one page of your site to another) count as links, but what others say about you means more than what you say about yourself. External links (links from other domains) are better than internal links, but internal links do count. Make sure to link between pages of your site. Internal links are also one place you can guarantee control over the anchor text of the link.

In general the easier a link is to get the less value it likely has. Even if it does have great value your competition will be able to get that same link as easily as you thereby diluting the effect of the link.

Where to Get Links From

Now that we’ve discussed what makes for a better link how and where should we get links? Any page that will link back to one of your pages is a link. Most will help to some degree, but given the above discussion of link quality some links are going to help more.

I’ll point you to a few sources with specific ideas on how and where to get links from and keep the discussion here to a few general thoughts.

Low Quality Links

These
are usually easy to get. Forums, directories, blog comments are a few examples. These links are links and they should pass on raw link juice and value. However, because these links are generally low quality you probably don’t want to spend too much time trying to get them without having other reasons for getting those links.

For example I participate regularly in several forums and each contains links in my forum signature back to my site. I never post though just to get another signature link. I post in order to interact with the communities of those forums. That interaction has directly led to friends and clients and yes even some SEO benefit. Again the goal of post is not the link. That’s simply a nice side benefit.

The same thing applies to blog comments. The value in those comments is that you get to be in front of an audience that may very well be interested in you and your site. If you spend time leaving interesting or entertaining comments on a few blogs on similar topics to your blog you’ll find some of that audience will follow you back to your site and the blog owner may also do the same. If you simply leave a quick and useless comment you’re missing out. The link itself is probably not going to help much. It’s the quality of the comment that matters most. Any SEO benefit is a nice side bonus.

High Quality Links
They are harder to get and will ultimately give you more benefit. It makes more sense to actively work to get these links. Trusted, authority sites probably aren’t going to link to you just because you ask. You’re generally going to need to give them a reason to link to you.

That starts with your own content. The better your content the more likely someone will want to link to it. It’s always going to be easier to get people to link to quality than garbage.

Give to get. You want me to link to you? Why not link to me first? When you help others it makes them want to help you back. Think about how you can help the site you’re hoping will link back to you. One way you can do this is by guest blogging.

Many design and development blogs are actively seeking guest posts. You should get back a short bio which can include a link or two. Also if you have content that further explains some things you’re writing about you can add a link in the text. As long as the link points to page that is relevant to the guest post most bloggers will be fine with you adding it. Just don’t overdo it.

Remember first and foremost the goal is to write the best post you can for that other site.

Build relationships. Network with other designers. We’re all more likely to help friends than we are to help strangers. We’re also more likely to be familiar with the content of people and sites we know making it easier to link to that content.

In the end the best way to generate quality links is to have content worth linking to. Instead of spending all your time chasing after links with dubious benefit spend more time creating content others will find useful. You still need to give your content a push. If you build it they will come only works in the movies.

Resources

The following should generate lots of ideas for where and how you can build links into your site.

• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity
• 30 Ways to Get Links Naturally & Stop Link Building
• 45 Link Building Tips To Help You Promote Your Blog
• Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
• 6 Ways to Build Links with Your Graphic Design Skills

5. Analytics

All of the previous discussion on SEO is great, but how do you know if any of it is working? The answer is in analytics. You need to measure what’s happening in order to know if your efforts are successful and leading to a positive return on your investment.

SEO is not a set it and forget it proposition. It’s an iterative process. You try some things, measure how effective they are and learn what you can for the next round of iteration.

There’s no excuse not to have analytics set up on your site. There are many companies that offer solutions at varying costs. Google Analytics, while far from perfect, is free, easy to set up, and most importantly offers some good statistics to help you understand what’s happening with your site.

At the simplest level you can pay attention to how much traffic you’re receiving from search engines and other sources. Ideally your traffic will continue to grow, but if it doesn’t or if you notice you’ve suddenly lost a lot of traffic you can begin to look deeper to understand why.

A few easy things you can do.

• See what keywords are currently bringing traffic and expand. For example if your site currently brings traffic for “san diego real estate,” “san francisco real estate,” and “los angeles real estate” it’s a good indication you can compete for real estate in other California cities and even the more general “california real estate.”
• Track keyword rankings or at least what page in the results your page ranks
• Discover which content on your site does best. Which content is getting the most views, which content is attracting the most links, which content are people landing on most often. Can you create more content on the same or similar content?
• Find out which sites are sending the best traffic. Say you write guest posts for 5 different sites. Which site or site led to the most traffic? Did the traffic from one site stick around on your site longer? Did one lead to more people subscribing to your blog? Knowing which sites provide the best traffic lets you know where better to focus your efforts.
• Learn who visits your site. What browser and operating system do they use? Where are they located? The more you know about the people who spend time with your site, the better you can craft new content to keep them coming back and bring more people like them to the site.
• Identify what you do and don’t do well. Are you getting a lot of search traffic, but little referral traffic? Are people spending time on one page, but not clicking to others? Are people visiting lots of pages, but not spending time on any of them? How sticky is your site?

There are many things you can do with analytics, but before you can do any of them you need to have analytics set up. You need to understand what is happening on your site, what is and isn’t working, in order to know how to improve your site in the next iteration.

Summary

Way back at the start of this short series of posts I mentioned that SEO is a complex subject. We’ve really only touched upon the surface of search engine optimization in this series. No single post or series of posts could hope to explain all the nuances of search, especially when search engines work so hard to protect their algorithms and often change very quickly.

The aim of this series has been to help give you a foundation so you’re better prepared to separate good information from bad in your further research. While these posts won’t make you an SEO expert there are a few takeaways I hope you’ll carry with you.

• Search Engine Optimization is only one part of marketing. You don’t want to ignore all the other ways to market your site. Search traffic can be very good traffic, but it’s far from the only traffic you can get. Be realistic and make your SEO efforts a part, albeit an important part, of your overall marketing efforts.
• The latest and greatest SEO tips are often worthless. If you knew a secret that could bring you millions of visitors from search engines would you tell everyone and give away your competitive advantage? Probably not. Neither does anyone else. That’s not to say all SEO advice is bad. Far from it. But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone promises you easy fixes like changing a single word on your site so all your pages will rank #1 be very skeptical.
• It’s important to understand how people use words, their intent in using those words, and how they are likely to search for you, your information, your products, or your services. The obvious keywords are not always best and success is often in getting small amounts of traffic to many pages across your site instead of focusing all your efforts on a single page or two.
• When building a site or writing content for a site, always think about real people first. When you make sites usable and accessible you also help search spiders crawl and index your site. When you write content naturally real people will respond better. It’s a good idea to understand what search engines like to see in sites and pages and make decisions accordingly, but always keep the real people using your site at the forefront.
• Links play a very large part in how well pages and sites rank in search engines. Not all links are created equal. Some are better than others. Generally the harder it is to get a link, the more likely that single link will benefit you. Low quality links are easy to get and so everyone gets them. High quality links are what separates you from the competition in most cases. Great content and creativity is the backbone for getting others to link to you.
• When you’re confused about a particular piece of SEO advice it sometimes helps to think like an engineer working at a search engine. Search is often a cat and mouse game between SEOs and search engineers. Search engines place value on a meta tag, people begin to abuse the tag, search engineers place less weight and then no weight on meta tags. If you imagine you’re a search engineer fighting spam you can sometimes tell what is and isn’t likely to work now or work in the future.

Resources

The following are some of my favorite blogs in the SEO community. If you follow the links in their posts you can easily build a pretty large list of SEO feeds in a short amount of time. SEO by the Sea has an extensive blogroll in the right sidebar to make building that list even quicker. I’ve also tried to link to a variety of sources throughout this series of posts.

• SEO Book
• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• Huomah
• SEO by the Sea

Finally here are some free general SEO guides guides, checklists, and useful articles. They should cover much of what we’ve talked about in this series, albeit in slightly greater detail. I hope they help in your SEO learning.

• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
• SEO Fast Start
• Search Engine Ranking Factors
• Local Search Engine Ranking Factors
• SEO Checklist (supersized), hold the B.S.
• Free Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Videos

Have you read the previous 2?

This SEO guide for beginners comes in a series of 3 articles, if you ‘ve missed the previous Part I and Part II, here are the direct links to them:

• Part I
• Part II

3d Street Art, often known as 3d chalk art is 2-dimensional artwork drawn on the street itself that gives you a 3-dimensional optical illusion from a certain perspective. It can be very breathtaking, realistic and at the same time captivating once you get the angle correct. And creating one is certainly though and challenging as you are creating a realistic 3d view out of a 2d painting.

3d street art are gaining much popularity these days. Notable brands are already taking advantage of public’s curiosity on 3D street paintings to create awareness for their products. You’ll see some later in the post. In today’s post, I’d like to show you some of the really stunning 3d Street art that I’ve came across and I think you’ll like them too. Full list after jump.

Hot river. Nearly the whole street were taken to create this earth cracking effect. Brilliant piece of art! (via Edgar Mueller)

Ice abyss. Watch out to not fall in this huge ice abyss! (via Edgar Mueller)

Raft. Now that the street is flooded, raft is your only resort to get to the other side. (via Edgar Mueller)

Johnnie Walker in Taipei. Underworld of Johnnie Walker. (via Manfred Stader)

Mysterious cave. You don’t have to travel around around the world exploring mysterious caves – somtimes they are just under you. (via Edgar Mueller)

Reflection. People on the upper part of the image is real but their reflection on the bottom part of the image is drawn. (via Kurt Wenner)

Melstorm. And here comes the vortex! (via Kurt Wenner)

Muses. This drawing looks like an old, classic painting, similar to paintings in medieval castles. (via Kurt Wenner)

Hole. Another drawing which shows what happens under the street. (via Kurt Wenner)

Relaxing giant. A huge giant relaxing on the street. (via Kurt Wenner)

Horses. It’s a cowboy show, yee-haw! (via Kurt Wenner)

Office stress. This drawing represents daily life of a typical office, maybe? (via Kurt Wenner)

Crazy river. Just hold on and here we go… Oh snap, I didn’t see that crock down the river! (via Julian Beever)

Escalator. Escalator from the underground. This looks very realistic! (via Manfred Stader)

Grant’s. Ice cold 3D chalk drawing for “Grant’s”. (via Manfred Stader)

Smart. This is very big, shiny drawing which is made for “Smart”. (via Manfred Stader)

Nails. Ouch, this hurts! (via Manfred Stader)

Asian Paints – Mumbai. What’s this? It’s a colour waterfall! (via Manfred Stader)

EasyJet – Edinburg. So it’s possible to kick back at a beach, in the middle of a city. (via Manfred Stader)

Hot bath. And here we have a hot bath which is open for everyone! (via Manfred Stader)

Costa – Covent Garden. A really realistic cup of cappuccino. (via Manfred Stader)

Ford Mexico. (via Manfred Stader)

T-Com. (via Manfred Stader)

Orange. Beautiful underworld by Orange. (via Manfred Stader)

3D Shark. (via Manfred Stader)

HDI. Be careful where you park your car. (via Manfred Stader)

Treuhaus. 3D chalk drawing can also be on the wall. (via Manfred Stader)

A fair in cologne. (via Manfred Stader)

Alice In Wonderland. Where fantasy meets reality. (via Manfred Stader)

Pfizer. (via Manfred Stader)

Bukaresti – Romania 2009. Watch out for the crashing in car, or should it be crasing up. (via Manfred Stader)

The world’s biggest fly. World’s biggest fly meets world smallest fly-spray. (via Julian Beever)

Batman and Robin to the rescue. (via Julian Beever)

Waste of water. (via Julian Beever)

Eiffel Tower Sand-Sculpture. Artificial Eiffel Tower built using sand. (via Julian Beever)

Self-portrait of artist with liquid refreshment. He has drawn himself! (via Julian Beever)

Treasures. Found a treasure in the center of the city! (via Julian Beever)

Hang on!. That’s right, the help is on its way. (via Julian Beever)

Spiderman. (via Julian Beever)

Taking the plunge. Ready, get set, jump! (via Julian Beever)

Waterfall. (via Julian Beever)

Heaven. It seems like we have a heaven beneath us too. (via Tracy Lee Stum)

Train. Here comes the underground train! (via Tracy Lee Stum)

Water In The Way. How should I cross this? Tough question. (via Tracy Lee Stum)

Escape of the mummy. Mummy is climbing out of underground! (via Tracy Lee Stum)

Temple of the jaguar. (via Tracy Lee Stum)

The Medici Garden. (via Tracy Lee Stum)

Drawn Basketball Optical Illusion. Someone should take that ball of the street, or maybe not. (via Greg Lehman)

Lizards. Animals from the underground. (via Gregor Wosik)

Jack Daniels. (via Gregor Wosik)

Have you ever seen a word and read the same word upside down? This is one form of an ambigram. An ambigram (from Latin: ambi both + gram = letter) is a word or words that can be read in more than one direction, where the word reads the same when upside down or turn over to form an entirely new word. The term “ambigram” was first used to mean “ambiguous anagram” by Judith E. Bagai, a former editor of The Enigma, the official organ of The National Puzzlers’ League.

There are many types of ambigrams such as rotational ambigrams, reflective types, 3-dimensional, etc. but the most basic and popular ones are the flipscript or rotational ambigram in which word or words when flipped both horizontal or vertical way, still spells the same word as before. Today, ambigrams are used in graphic design, commercial logos, book covers, tattoo artworks and music albums. These typographical artworks are used by graphic designers because of their symmetry and the optical illusions it present. Ambigrams became much more popular when it was prominently featured in Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, Angels & Demons. With patience and creativity, you can turn any word into an ambigram.

Below are my collection of 40 really cool and creatively designed ambigrams. Without further ado, let start twisting our neck and try to view them in upside down

Brands we are familiar with..

Ambigram in domain names

• doxob.com
• ap.xozzox.de
• http://ap.xozzox.de//:dtty
• http://graner.net/nicolas/selcoiu/tau.jauejb//:dtty
• 66.gg

References

• Ambigram generators – Flipscript
• Another ambigram generator – Wowtattoos
• Ambigrams, information and tutorials – Ambigram.net
• Various words in Ambigrams – Flipscript
• Ambigram magazine – Ambigram.com
• John Langdon’s ambigrams, logo and art – Johnlangdon.net