Entries from October 2008 ↓

I’m not a morning person. The moment my iPhone’s terrible “alarm” rings, I curse the day. There’s only one reason why I make it to the office, or anywhere besides my bed. Music.

It fuels my life. And those of my friends. We exchange music every day - our drop boxes are working overtime. The Hypemachine, a secret new music service, and some specific friends on Twitter supply us with inspiration for new songs and albums. There’s only one downside.., my iTunes collection is a mess.

In comes TuneUp

Actually, my iTunes collection was a mess. Ever since I’ve discovered TuneUp, I can browse my collection Cover Flow style without being agitated by the lack of covers.

TuneUp is a management tool that let’s you clean dirty tracks (like the ones that have the artists’s name in the song title), find missing cover art, receive upcoming concert alerts, and enjoy music videos.

The PC version is available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and English, so most of your European folks can use the service in your native language. People from Holland, Scandinavia, and Eastern European countries must remain patient for a while.

Still in beta, we have 50 invites

TuneUp for Mac is still in private beta, meaning it made my Mac crash once and it loads very slowly. But still, my collection looks way better now. So grab yourself one of those Next Web invites to try it our yourself. Send an email to thenextweb@tuneupmedia.com, the first 50 will be invited to the TuneUp Mac Beta.

The normal program is free for 500 songs/50 album art cleans, and $19.95 for unlimited (Gold version).

“Wow!” was basically my reaction to this video of the Fly Stick levitating toy in action, followed by the realization that this is about as near as you’ll ever get to really playing with magic (or the Force, my inner geek reminded me). Of course the forces it uses are all very real: it’s a mini battery-powered Van der Graaf generator, and it uses electrostatic repulsion to keep some 3D mylar shapes aloft. So you don’t need to utter “wingardium leviosa!” or indeed “use the force!” to make it work, but that’s not going to stop hundreds of delighted users from doing so, now is it? Out now for $27. [ThinkGeek via OhGizmo]

This is turning out to be quite a good week for OpenID, an increasingly popular mechanism for creating and managing a single identity across the Internet. On Monday, Microsoft announced that it would give every Windows Live user an OpenID account, and today, Google announced a very similar plan.

Google will allow web services to join a limited test of an API based on the OpenID 2.0 protocol that will give Google Account users the option to sign in to websites with their Google credentials and without having to sign up for a new account at those sites.

Sponsor

Among the launch partners for this new API are Zoho, Plaxo, and Buxfer.

Don’t Mention OpenID

One of the key results of Yahoo’s OpenID usability study was that users did not understand OpenID and what its logo stands for. Instead, Yahoo promoted the idea of giving users a sign-in button that simply said “Sign In with a Yahoo! ID” (though Chris Messina argues that this could be detrimental to OpenID in the long run).Google and its partners are taking a similar route and are basically bypassing any mention of OpenID itself in favor of a simple message saying “Sign in with a Google Account.”

More to Come

Google also announced that it is looking to combine the OAuth and OpenID protocol so that a service can not only request a user’s identity through OpenID, but also “request access to information available via OAuth-enabled APIs such as Google Data APIs as well as standard data formats such as Portable Contacts and OpenSocial REST APIs.”

Tipping Point?

Thanks to this announcement, a wide range of some of the web’s largest service providers now supports OpenID: Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, and AOL.

As John McCrea notes, the result of these announcements from Google and Microsoft this week should be “a massive adoption wave for OpenID all over the web.”

Discuss

Poor netiquette can be downright infuriating. If you or someone you know has a problem with "shouting" online, the caps lock trainer key should take care of it in a hurry. As you can see, it is a standard key that has been fitted with two fourteen-gauge 10mm lebret spikes. It may seem a little extreme, but sometimes you need to go the extra mile to break a bad habit. Case in point—I routinely flagellate myself for putting my elbows on the table. [Make via CrunchGear]

UPDATE: We have 500 Nostradamical invites for Mashable readers. Visit the site and use the code MASHABLE to get access.

Nostradamical, a UK startup that’s currently in private beta, is ironically a little late with its Ruby on Rails-powered, “crowdsourcing”-inspired predictions site.  And predicting its success depends on the site’s ability to plug into other audiences rapidly.

The short, lazy description: it’s “Digg for predictions.”  The long one, courtesy of the Nostradamical site:

- Use collective intelligence to predict future world events.

- Create your own events. Tag and publish your predictions.

- Create lists that group together predictions under one theme (e.g. My Oscar Predictions).

- Rise through 7 levels of status and gain fame as an ‘Oracle’ of the future. Promote your blog or website.

The essence of that: make a prediction, and watch good predictions rise up as other people vote on their likelihood.  Vote correctly and you earn cred.  

Wisdom of What Now?

Incidentally, this is fundamentally not the way the Wisdom of Crowds works. That theory says that the most accurate prediction is made when users vote independently, without having seen the votes of others.  A Digg-like system, as mentioned many times on Mashable before, creates a herd-like mentality where your opinion is influenced by the people who came before you.  

And Yet, Salvageable

Yes, it’s not novel and it’s not technically a Wisdom of Crowds app as the About page claims.  It has a silly name, too.  But, the Nostradamical team sure as heck knows how to build a Web app, and that’s half the battle.  Everything works, it looks good, and it’s fun to play around with.

The secret, I think, will be to plug into other ecosystems to gain a user-base…blog partnerships ala PollDaddy (a polling company that got a great deal of traction by working with blogs like Mashable), Twitter syndication, Facebook apps, an API and the rest.

The Likely Outcome

Alas, most startups don’t get enough runway to achieve that critical mass and figure out the revenue model later.  No, if Nostradamical is to survive, it’ll likely do so by foregoing the consumer market (or at least treating it as a loss leader) and end up building prediction markets for internal use at companies.

Don’t believe me? Go check up on this 2007 list of 20+ Prediction Markets…where are they now?

As someone who spends a great deal of time developing web based products, one of the first steps we take is to launch Skitch to draft out some ideas for how things could work and the general concept as a whole. Once all that is done, we’re ready to move ahead. We need to get some specifics working and make sure that the user flows of particular areas are well thought out and as we want them. Normally we’d go straight to Omni Graffle for this phase, but that may be about to change…

Product Planner is new site brought to you by the guys at Kissmetrics, a simple & elegant tool which allows designers & UI specialists to quickly create a user flow. Each flow is organised by type  such as well as the kind of web product it’s designed for, such as social networking, photo sharing, etc. Product Planner gives you the option to privatise your ‘flows’ however you are encouraged to share with other visitors/users of the site to allow other users to learn and benefit.

With Product Planner the userflow process should become an awful lot slicker & smoother. The tools provided make putting together a solid user flow easy and fast. You’re then able to share it with the community and get the feedback you’ll need to make sure the finished product is as it should be and inevitably you end up with a happy community of your own. Once the site has expanded and more people have heard about it, you’ll be able to find the best user flows from across the site ensuring that your new site or product flows to perfection :)

Here’s an example of a user flow from the site:

The whole may be more than the sum of its parts, but without the parts, there is no whole. Lest that sound like some weird philosophical meandering to you, take comfort in observing the finer aspects of creative and appealing user interface design.

The following list bucks tradition by not being tied to one particular theme; although, as you’ll see, there are subtle threads running through them. While excellent, none of these designs are perfect, and I’ve pointed out room for improvement we can learn from.

Give it a go. Grab a coffee and take time to explore further. As you would a quality timepiece made of thousands of parts, analyze and enjoy how intricate parts come together to create a cohesive experience. Look closely and see what makes each website design tick.

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• 40 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

OkayDave

OkayDave.com
I’ve noticed Dave Werner’s portfolio mentioned in passing on Smashing Magazine before and thought it was well worth a closer look, even if it dates to 2006. One basic way to provide focus and emphasis is to desaturate everything except the target element. On OkayDave, all is in black and white until you mouse over an element.

Things get startlingly more vibrant when you actually click something; a burst of colored particles brighten the screen before transitioning to the selected media. It’s a tad on the over-compressed side but only lasts a second. What a great way to combine very artificial and earthly organics (see Dave’s handwriting and scratchy notes, in particular). And, rewarding visitors for clicking will encourage them to spend more time discovering your content.

Vimeoland

Vimeoland
Video-sharing website Vimeo is known for a number of things, foremost among them being an astoundingly consistent user interface, an example being its very user-friendly roadmap. Vimeoland is a playful form of data visualization: little figurines teleport in, representing unique website users and their status. For example, hearts appear above their heads when they like a video. From time to time, an airplane will fly by.

YouTube may be the biggest video website, but its user interface falls short of Vimeo’s elegance. Vimeo’s video quality, which can go up to true high definition, is superior, too. Something worth thinking about the next time you want to make a film easily accessible.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark.com
Looking for music? Grooveshark may have what you want. In a turbulent time when popular mainstays like Pandora and Muxtape have run into legal tangles because of archaic copyright laws, Grooveshark claims to be in the clear, compensating artists for their work.

Alas, this also means that unlike other services, such as imeem, you can’t (at least yet) embed music on your blog. But I was surprised by how many rare tracks that I searched were already available (they apparently reward people for uploading). Two problems I noticed: (1) some broken help files, and (2) the circular progress indicator will keep going infinitely if it can’t play a song. Hopefully they’ll be smarter about that in the future.

But overall the player is very slick: queued songs visually lock together like Legos, elements slide horizontally to show and hide controls and hierarchies as needed, and the overall blue and gray theme — like a shark! — is sleek.

If you want to download songs, your registration needs to be approved. It’s not an automated process yet, and I’m still waiting for my approval.

SpaceCollective

SpaceCollective.org
Into trans-humanism, fringe science, and the far reaches of space? Space Collective bills itself as “a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward-thinking terrestrials”. And its website is a joy to visit: in the new posts section, fresh content is arranged in a curved-corner matrix, with green tabs to indicate specific projects.

It seems pretty far out at first, and you may not buy some of the beliefs, but even a glimpse of this imagery will uplift your perspective on humanity’s creativity in the cosmos.

Funnel Design Group

FunnelDesignGroup.com
Do you remember the bizarre devices in the first Myst game that combined familiar elements, and by doing so, came off as alien? The “dentist-chair planetarium” hybrid was a striking example of that. When you visit Funnel’s website, you’ll sense a similar atmosphere: gears are churning away, and a little automaton with a lightbulb for a head is there to help you view its work. It’s almost Steampunk-ish.

I appreciate the detail they’ve gone into: selecting a different section makes the art in the O-shaped viewfinder spring a little, and the title up top closes and opens, as if it were a piece of paper in a rotating carousel. (The old-time Glenn Miller music and whirring sounds are fitting, too.)

Viewzi

Viewzi.com
Finally, in the visual search arena, Viewzi’s results aggregate other websites (like Google and Amazon) and present them in the most sensible context it can detect. For example, searching for “Royksopp” (whose “Remind Me” video has been popular on Smashing Magazine) brings up the album view first. Clicking on it brings up a list of the group’s CD covers.

If that doesn’t suit you, multiple other views — like the traditional “Simple Text” and the pseudo-3D “Photo Tag Cloud” — allow you to explore the same data in different ways. They have other views for specialized searches, so try them all out for appropriate media.

GoDesignate

GoDesignate.com
Here’s another fine example of a goodie-hook. The Web developers at Buffalo were inspired to create this after a “‘discussion about whose turn it was to make the tea.” It provides a clean twist on the old “cards in the hat” process and takes seconds to use. The reference to Buffalo at the bottom is a compact pixelfont, a subtle reassurance that they’re not intrusive marketers.

I couldn’t help but ask if this was actually used by the company, and Dan Griffiths, Managing Director, graciously replied:

“Glad you like it! We do use it for all sorts of things still. You should see some of the things people use it for. :)”

“Should I leave my husband?” was one of the strangest ones I have noticed!

Some more from a list of highlights Dan shared with me:

“Why does my boss call me lady?”

“Will Chris ever regain his masculinity?”

“Should I make a new site design based on Buffalo’s design?”

When hooks like this are in tune with your company’s overall image and sense of humor they build brand familiarity through repeated usage, not to mention subsequent smiles.

Hypnoteis

Hypnoteis.nl
Teis Albers is fond of splashy color. His style is more about grungy splashes of paint and pseudo-decoupage, as demonstrated in his gritty depictions of font flourishes set against a backdrop of various animal and human body parts. But similar to Pagano’s website, clicking on any thumbnail will dynamically zoom and enlarge that picture without refreshing the page. While Pagano’s zooms are Flash-based, Albers uses the magic of Highslide JavaScript.

Serge Seidlitz

Serge Seidlitz
But sometimes you want to make everything stand out, and that’s what this guy is here for. Using a mess-on-the-bedroom-floor approach similar to Werner’s, Seidlitz has nothing fancy in the way of mouse-overs. But his motley assemblage of mayhem does invite clicking: he even urges you to “click on things.”

Needless to say, if you keep updating your portfolio with new stuff, maintaining a website like this could become a time-consuming jumble. But if you already have a wealth of work to show off, the discover-my-creative-chaos approach might work for you.

Six Pixels of Separation

Six Pixels of Separation is Mitch Joel’s showcase of social media insights. It looks pretty usual and boring at the first glance, but a closer look reveals a close attention to detail. Consider how sparse graphical elements are used for maximum effect. Embedded podcasts fit perfectly into the theme; it’s relatively easy to navigate, despite the large amount of links; and leaving a comment rewards you with a surprising (but non-annoying) pop-up; try it!

There are too many social media blogs out there that buy into the same generic “Web 2.0″ conventions. Six Pixels bucks that banality with a layout that doesn’t get in the way of “the meat” and is all the better for it.

Fontpark 2.0

Fontpark 2.0
When I see Web typography guides, they’re often in the Roman characters that I’m well familiar with, so it’s refreshing to look beyond this style and bask in what else is happening around the world.

Japan’s Morisawa is a venerable typesetting company, and in addition to a brief but helpful primer on Japanese Kanji Culture, they have created Fontpark, a unique way of looking at characters with hundreds of years of history. Sit back and watch pieces be animated into animals and faces, or be an active participant and submit your work to the gallery.

Like FontStruct, this is a novel way of promoting your paid products with a quality freebie, another kind of goodie-hook. It may not be as funny as CSS Homer, but finding faces in the swashes and strokes is enlightening nonetheless.

Picnik

Picnik.com
Staying on the food theme, here is a Picnik of a very special sort. Sure, you rely on Photoshop for your more heavy-handed tasks, and rising Web-based image editors such as a.viary boast complex features. But when you want to retouch photos in a jiffy, Picnik is nothing short of a usability dream!

From the smooth registration form (observe how password and email confirmation fields are hidden until you need them, reducing the perception of complexity) to the actual “in-the-basket” look and feel of this Flash application, Picnik is a joy to use inside and out. It simply puts other Web-based image editors to shame — or at least inspires them to do better.

Bestiario

Bestiario.org
Fancy more data visualization? This isn’t as playful as Vimeoland but is substantial in its own right. At first, the lack of anti-aliasing may hurt your eyes, but scroll over (or down) the projects and watch the collection unfold. It’s almost like a very graphical elevator.

It’s fun to move your cursor to the right, whereupon the whole gallery will tilt, as if to look at you askance and ask “Now what?” Well, there’s a pop-out collection of tags on the far right, containing another way to navigate the set. And if you love mathematical visuals…

Phatterism

Phatterism.com
This website is one of the neatest ways I’ve seen (even if somewhat impractical) to share a blog (and other media). Upon visiting, Luis Santi Jr. will greet you with ample white space, fidgeting and occasionally gazing to his left, imploring you to check out his stuff. Like Funnel Design, he’s got his own head-bopping music, which reminds me of the Austin Powers movies.

Click “TXT” and Luis goes to work for you, pulling out an index card of his journal entries. His hand even moves a bit unsteadily, adding to the realistic feel. If you click on a title, you’ll see him scribbling a note, then hold it up for you. The shakes are gone now and the handwriting is obviously a font, but what impressed me is how he presents his comments; they, too, are shown as separate note cards.

What a fun way to show yourself off! For more of Santi’s work, see his main portfolio.

Energi Design

Clickenergi.com
From the get-go, Steve Holmes’ compact Flash website doesn’t have very much, but what’s on it is amazing. He has done video tutorials for well-known stock content provider ArtBeats, and you owe it to yourself to watch his demo reel. The earlier, more up-tempo music he used when I first saw this a while ago was better, but the visuals are captivating nonetheless. If you enjoy type-in-motion videos like Justice’s “DVNO,” this will definitely appeal to you.

Mirror’s Edge

MirrorsEdge.com
It seems like every big game title coming out nowadays needs a Flash website. They’re usually very glossy and don’t have a lot of content, but the techniques involved are well worth experiencing. Mirror’s Edge, which is due for release in November 2008, has already been acclaimed for its aesthetics. Promoting a game with authoritarian cyberpunk gloom but set in a very clean white-blue city, the website complements it almost perfectly.

The waving of the main character’s hair and the slow rotation of the city are nice little touches. Games with such a striking and individual look are rare (some of my favorites include the Wipeout series and Ico) and beg to be copied. Of course, the irony is that copycatting leads to angry cries that the spawns are too derivative.

Observe also that the buttons and headers are slightly askew but not horrendously so, lending a certain sense of dynamic imbalance that reflects the fleet-footed parkour seen in the game.

Like.com

Like.com
Visual search continues to rise. A couple of decades ago, the mere idea of searching through thousands of catalogued images seemed improbable. Today, we can enjoy it everyday on websites like Flickr. Websites such as Riya’s Like.com go a few steps further, and they claim to be “slowly innovating” by improving facial and object recognition. Like a handbag but think the material’s a bit too shiny? Narrow not just by color but by style, and feel like you have more investment in (and control over) the overall search process.

Someday, this will be commonplace too, but until then, it’s flirty fun to drill through look-alike Halloween costumes to pick out one that’s just right for you.

Navigaya

Navigaya.com
Think visual search is too quiet? Navigaya is another value-added search aggregator with a twist: by default, as you search, a halftone-mottled music video (from YouTube) plays in the background. Most of the selections are electronic dance, and, while not immediately obvious, you can reveal the transport controls by moving your cursor to the top of the screen.

Highlights to look out for: the blurred in-and-out (not just faded) effect for hover tips and certain menus, and dotted icons for arrows and other buttons. It’s a tight, dark design that gives the appearance of staying in the background even when it’s in the foreground.

Overall, Navigaya is too claustrophobic at times for my taste compared to Viewzi, because it mainly shows its search engine results in windows within windows. But if you like your search activities to be an information onslaught, give this a spin.

What common threads can you identify running through different design styles? The surfaces may look different, but the underlying spirits and code may have more in common than you think. Take a moment to gaze, absorb, and mentally deconstruct; it will increase your overall understanding of why great Web design works.

About the author

Torley Wong loves to “amplify your awesome” as a screencast pioneer, virtual worlds expert, and aesthetic enthusiast. His video tutorials, which you can watch on Torley Lives, have been viewed over three million times. (al)

Related articles

You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:

• 40 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

Noupe is doing a good job cataloging content, such as their post on great JavaScript CSS menu libraries which features:

• Sexy Sliding Menu - Andrew Sellick decided to use mootools due to the smoothness of their effects, however, he developed a sliding menu using script.aculo.us
• FastFind Menu Script - This script allows for nested menus, based on dynamic “AJAX” responses. The menu can also be dragged/dropped thanks to the jQuery Interface Library.
• Webber 2.0 Dock Menu - Great example of a dock type navigation.
• Phatfusion- Image Menu - Image menu using javascript, onClick event keeps selected item open and to close it again.
• Drag and Drop ordering in a TreePanel - This example shows basic drag and drop node moving in a tree. In this implementation there are no restrictions and anything can be dropped anywhere except appending to nodes marked “leaf” (the files).
• Custom Menu Events This is a combination of animation and custom events where Think Vitamin team show us how menu items sliding into view and firing off subscribable events using Yahoo! UI
• Context Menu Functionality This is a combination of animation and custom events where Think Vitamin team show us how menu items sliding into view and firing off subscribable events using Yahoo! UI.
• LavaLamp jQuery Sliding Menu It is a jQuery sliding nifty effect menu with light weight code and extra two more interface styles.
• Slashdot Menu- Dynamic DriveThis is a stylish collapsible menu modelled after the navigational menu found on Slashdot.
• Mootools menu with Accordeon and EffectsThis cool menu has a neat effect by hovering over the links, and opens a 2 level submenu with an accordeon.
• CSS Dock Menu If you are a big Mac fan, you will love this CSS dock menu that Nick La designed. It is using Jquery Javascript library and Fisheye component from Interface and some of their icons.
• jQuery Plugin: Sliding Menu A very simple sliding menu using the effects provided by the Interface plugin.
• Accessible expanding and collapsing menu

Saving repetitive tasks as Photoshop actions can save you a lot of time, allowing you to automate your work and improve workflow efficiency. A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands and operations that you can save and access later on.

We’ve searched for the best downloadable Photoshop actions that can help you improve your workflow and perform complex techniques with the push of a button. In this collection, you’ll find more than 350 free hand-picked Photoshop actions that you can use to speed up your graphics creation.

Note: It’s important to check the license of each action set you download and use.

Quick Introduction to Photoshop Actions

For those unfamiliar with Photoshop actions, they’re simply pre-recorded tasks that you can save and reuse anytime. Photoshop actions commonly have an .atn file extension. Installing a Photoshop action for more recent versions of Photoshop is easy: simply drag the .atn file onto the Actions palette or place it directly inside your Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Photoshop Actions folder. For a more comprehensive discussion of Photoshop actions, check out this complete guide to Photoshop actions.

Image Effects and Graphic Creation Actions

Cross-processing ATN
Simulate the Cross-processing (Xpro) photography technique using this Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

Lomo
Give your images a “Lomo” look and feel with this excellent Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

Lomo Cross-processing
This Photoshop action is a combination of two popular photography effects: Lomo and Cross-processing.

1 action - Download

Polaroid Generator
Automatically frame an image in a Polaroid border with this set of Photoshop actions.

5 actions - Download

Hand-Colored Vintage Photo
This is a handy Photoshop action set for giving images aged, dirty effects.

4 actions - Download

Vintage
Aly’s Vintage action set is a nice collection of six vintage image effects that you can use on modern digital photos.

6 Actions - Download

Vintage Wash
Give your images an old, vintage effect with this set of ten different actions.

10 actions - Download

Old Parchment
Easily create aged paper with this free Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

Simple Stamp Generator
Automatically create a stamp graphic with this action.

1 action - Download

Pseudo HDR
Mimic the “HDR” photo effect without having to use multiple exposures of the subject.

1 action - Download

HDR For Dummies
Here’s another easy-to-use Photoshop action set for giving photos the “HDR” effect.

3 actions - Download

IR Actions
Give your photos the popular infrared effect using Dave’s IR Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

IR Effect
Here is another method for faking the infrared photographic effect using a Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

Photo Effect Action
This Photoshop action can be used for grunge designs.

1 action - Download

Comics Photoshop Action
Give your image a comic book look and feel using this Photoshop action.

1 action - Download

Retro Love
Achieve a retro-colored image effect using the Retro Love action.

1 action - Download

Soften Skin Effect
Smoothen skin and remove blemishes with the Soften Skin Effect action.

1 action - Download

Burnt Edges Vignette
This action gives your photos burnt and high-key effects (available for low- and high-resolution images, see the “Try Me”-section).

4 actions - Download site, check the “Try Me”-section

Edge Effects
This set of actions allows you to give your images different types of edge effects.

8 actions - Download

B & Big Picture
Create a three-dimensional collage effect using one source image with the B & Big Picture action.

4 actions - Download

Photo Enhancement and Processing Actions

Black and White Photoshop Actions
This is a set of useful actions for processing black and white images.

8 actions - Download

TLR B&W Toning
TLR B&W Toning is a large action set for enhancing and processing black and white images.

30 actions - Download

Photoshop Postwork Actions
Here is a ton of excellent post-work Photoshop actions.

25 actions - Download

TLR Sharpening Toolkit
This is a useful Photoshop action pack for sharpening RGB, CMYK and monochrome photos.

33 actions - Download

TLR Tone Enhance
Enhance the tone and color of your images using this Photoshop action set.

30 actions - Download

Color Enhancing Actions
Here is a variety of actions, such as “colorboost,” “softlight,” and “contrastboost.”

10 actions - Download

Photoshop Color Actions
A nice collection of color actions to process and enhance your photographs.

10 actions - Download

Cross Coloring Tools
Here is a set of actions for dark, mid-range, and light cross-coloring of image tone.

4 actions - Download

Image Enhancing PS Actions
These are ten brilliant image-enhancing Photoshop actions.

10 actions - Download

Watermark Photoshop Action
Automate the watermarking of your images with this set of Photoshop actions.

9 actions - Download

Photographers Toolkit
A wonderful set of actions for photographers to enhance photos.

9 actions - Download

Assorted Sets of Actions

Photoshop Actions - 53
This is the 53rd set of Photoshop actions by =night-fate of deviantART.

9 actions - Download

Productions Action
This is a set of useful actions that will simplify your workflow for common Photoshop tasks.

20 actions - Download

Photoshop Automator Actions
This is one of the biggest sets of useful actions to cut down on repetitive tasks such as watermarking images, scaling images, and fitting images in the canvas. You need to register before being able to download the set.
90 actions - Download

Photography Action Set
This is an excellent collection of popular photo effects, such as HDR, Lomo, Velvia, Xpro and more.

8 actions - Download

Rather Large Set of Actions
This is a large collection of useful Photoshop actions.

40 actions - Download

Photoshop Actions - 62
Another beautiful set of assorted Photoshop actions by =night-fate.

8 actions - Download

About the Author

Jacob Gube is a Web developer/designer and author of Six Revisions, a blog on Web development and design. If you want to connect with the author, you can follow him on Twitter. (al)

The iPhone syncs great with one computer, but what if you use two? Say you listen to music and watch movies on a home computer while managing all of your important business contacts on your work computer? If you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a hex editor and a few lines of simple code, you can sync your iPhone to multiple systems. Does that sound hard? It’s really not, promise. The tutorial is quite specific. [Shiny Things (how to) via Lifehacker]