Photoshop brushes can be powerful Web design tools, both enhancing a graphic artist’s work and enabling design projects to be completed faster. The more brushes a designer has in his or her collection, the more flexibility they will have with their designs. Fortunately, several websites have emerged over the past few years to provide designers with a multitude of options when it comes to brushes. Below are just some of the top sites that provide attractive, easy-to-use and free downloadable Photoshop brushes. Brusheezy Founded in 2006 by a designer who grew frustrated by the lack of options for easily searchable…more»

Things have been more than hectic lately, my biggest gripe about all of the pending work to complete is the fact that I’m  typically working in two different locations all day long. This is putting a damper on my ability to get things done by their deadlines due to the inability to just setup and go after I need to switch, it takes me a bit to get back on track due to other circumstances (not to be discussed).  Right now I’m in the process of designing an employment agencies site via wordpress for one client, a very detailed and…more»

It took about a year for me to get back up and running, but I’m happy to say that AcidGloss.net is back! The theme is up, and some content has been loaded in.  Over the course of the next couple weeks I’ll be blogging (a lot more), and hopefully able to get this domain back to where it used to be. There will be sponsored posts, but I’ll be sure to keep them limited so that it doesn’t take away from everything else.  I figured a very simple CSS design would keep everything flowing.  Eventually I’d like to turn this…more»

Repost from Gizmodo – Intel dumped $300 million into the laptop industry to buy it something it’s never had before: attention. Ultrabooks soundcool, and could look beautiful while running like little thin crust pizzas of awesome. Instead, we’re seeing pathetic MacBook Air clones. What went wrong? From the floor of Intel’s Developer Forum, its yearly showcase of new silicon and what it’s going in, it’s clear Apple’s capable of a two front intellectual property war, if they choose. Cupertino thinks its designs are under attack! And they are—but they’re looking in the wrong direction. Samsung’s phones and tablets might share…more»

Payvment, a Facebook e-commerce platform, is launching a developer platform for social commerce called Open Payvment. Open Payvment allows application developers and service providers to join their offerings with Payvment. Companies can integrate Payvment into their products and services, build new apps and gain exposure to more than 100,000 Facebook sellers that are already using the Payvment social commerce platform. “Payvment is the first foray into e-commerce for many new sellers — as their businesses grow, they are frequently looking for additional solutions that are compatible with their Payvment store, such as web-based e-commerce or mobile commerce solutions,” says Christian…more»

Although e-commerce sales have risen over the past five years, conversion rates have continued to drop, this is partially due to a rise of the new type of e-commerce shopper, the “browser.” According to the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), conversion rates in the UK have dropped by 55 percent over the past five years. In 2006, the average online conversion rate for IMRG Capgemini e-commerce retailers was at 8.4 percent, which has since declined to 3.8 percent.  However, it is not all bad news for e-commerce retailers. Aside from lower conversion rates, online sales have continued to grow,…more»

Online employment platform Elance has released the results from its annual survey on small business hiring trends. The survey reveals the job outlook is bright for people working online as a multitude of businesses continue to adopt online hiring as a core strategy to remain agile in today’s economic climate. Small and medium-sized businesses also show that adaptability and efficiency are key motivating factors for hiring online professionals with 73-percent of businesses citing the flexibility to scale up and down quickly as a key benefit and 60 percent indicating faster time to hire vs. traditional hiring approaches yielding huge time…more»

As online marketers become more aggressive with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns, there can become a point at which businesses begin to over-optimize. When focusing purely on SEO, many companies lose sight of the end goal, which is to provide information to users. Even when you are following all of the more recognized SEO rules, when is optimization overdone and how can you prevent this from happening on your website? Are there Tsunami warning indicators to get out of the game before Google’s next Panda or Farmer update? And how do you find the ideal balance for your site, not…more»

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a piece of legislation designed to ensure that differently-abled people are properly equipped to navigate the same things that everyone else enjoys. Just as you wouldn’t build a shopping center without an alternative to stairs, so ADA standards require that websites are configured in such a way that someone who is hearing-impaired, or sight-impaired, etc., is not summarily excluded from using a public website. Building a website so that it conforms to ADA standards is largely a matter of putting yourself in that other person’s place and anticipating what they’re going to need,…more»

Reposted from WebsiteMagazine. There are many reasons why your attempts at conversion optimization could fail. If you avoid the mistakes listed in this article, then you will be more likely to succeed — it’s as simple as that. To achieve success in conversion optimization, here are the five biggest mistakes to avoid. 1. Getting blinded by your own knowledge and preferences If your conversion optimization efforts are largely based on what you like and how you behave, then you are more likely to fail. Not everyone is like you; there are at least three other temperaments to consider. According to…more»