TheDopeFiend

In The Mod

In The Mod is a small application that every designer will love. The application comes in four different editions: The Flickr Edition, Webcam Edition, Your Images Edition and the Online Edition. The concept of each edition is essentially the same, creating swatches from various photos from either various Flickr photos, photos from your webcam, and photos in your personal library. Have you ever been inspired by the color way of your favorite sneakers, or by a photo that you took of a building in you neighborhood. In The Mod can import and use photos to create a swatch of 1-1,000 different colors, and then export the swatch to Photoshop of Illustrator. A handy little tool in any designers collection of apps.

I Vote For Art

I love simple online tools that do their job well, especially when they allow you to make a little extra dough using your creative talents (ie. the amazing t-shirt site Bountee). The new Australian site I Vote For Art would fall into this category. I Vote For Art is simple, it allows you to easily buy and sell art and support small independent artists. Artwork is voted upon by users of the website, the most voted being featured on the homepage and towards the top of the artwork pages. Pieces must be submitted and accepted before posted to the site, and judging by the work so far the site’s management has a pretty good eye.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a new online service making it possible to easily and seamlessly sync and access your important files over multiple computers. After installing Dropbox the application creates a designated folder on your hard drive, simply drag and drop files into this folder and they are synced with your online account. Installing the application on multiple computers works the same way, except those files are now synced with all computers on your account as well as your online account. This is a great way to make sure you always have current working files if you are on-the-go or away from your computer and the ease-of-use is unmatched by any other option I have tried. Not only does Dropbox sync and backup your files, but you can also create public folders to invite others to collaborate and share files with. At the moment Dropbox is still in beta and only offers 2GB of storage. I am really hoping they offer pay plans with more storage which I am guessing is likely. The service is available for both Mac and PC and works fine over cross platform networks.

Songbird

I have had my eye on the web browser/music player hybrid Songbird for awhile now. Songbird has recently released version 0.5 and it’s looking pretty awesome. Songbird brings you features of other music players like iTunes, playing music from your hard drive and iPod. In addition to these features Songbird also doubles as a web browser that can play/download MP3s directly from music blogs or other music sites. Although I can’t really see using Songbird as my primary browser, it is built using the Mozilla platform so you definitely could. Overall I think the new version of Songbird is a solid tool for browsing MP3 blogs. Additional features include downloadable skins or “feathers”, iTunes Library Import, LastFM Audioscrobbler plug-in, Album Art Manager and a long list of other available plug-ins.

[Available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux]

Desktoptopia

Desktoptopia is an awesome little desktop/wallpaper manager that will automatically update your PC or Mac with fresh wallpapers directly from their online vault of wallpapers. Simply install their free software and set your preferences to how often each wallpaper changes and which libraries you want them selected from. They claim to have a panel that only selects the best of wallpapers submitted, and most of them I have seen so far have been pretty cool. However, if for some reason you aren’t liking the selected wallpaper you can easily skip to the next.

[Via: Josh Spear]

iPartee

No, despite what it sounds like iPartee is not another random overpriced accessory for the iPod. It is in fact a website designed for people who want a one-stop-shop for party events. In a nutshell this site allows you to plan events and share info with friends, share and promote your events, see what events your friends plan on attending, post photos of events and of course gives you widgets to share this info on your site. One feature I would see using a lot on this site is the venue guide. Whenever I visit another city I find myself browsing tons of useless websites trying to find what is going on where. If iPartee catches on I could see it being a great tool to browse venues and events in unfamiliar cities. In the sea of cool websites popping up these days it’s a bit hard to stand out from the rest, but if iPartee manages to do so it could be great.

Wear Palettes

Like most other designers/artists I find myself being influenced by a huge variety of sources. More often than not I get a great idea for a project when I am away from the computer. Like say a color scheme for a website from a well dressed woman walking down the street. The blog Wear Palettes has taken inspiration from the street photography of The Sartorialist and created color schemes using the awesome web tool Colour Lovers, then posting them all on their blog. A great idea for cataloging inspiration for design and fashion. I think it would be interesting to do this with a party photographer’s shots, like this one from Shadow Scene. I am sure you could come up with some some interesting schemes.

In Love With Bountee

Strait to the point here… Bountee is the coolest website I have come across in a long time. This says a lot because I visit hundreds of sites a day, and spend an embarrassing amount of time in front of this LCD screen. Bountee gives you the ability to design and sell t-shirts in the simplest and easiest way possible. There is no voting necessary in order to have your design printed. You make it. You sell it. You get paid! I love that everything has been done in the simplest way possible and gives the designer the power. You determine the price (anything above the base price), the color of shirt, the placement of the design, everything. After your design is created and uploaded Bountee does the rest, taking care printing, ordering and shipping. I plan on putting this website to use ASAP!

BONUS
CrownDozen and Bountee have teamed up to bring you 3 free t-shirts a week throughout all of December! Head over here for the details.

Humble Voice

Social networks are important for self-promotion, inspiration, boredom, and well… networking! Although, it’s getting more and more difficult to choose which social networks to join simply due to the number of them out there. If you are an artist, or appreciate artistic work I would recommend checking out Humble Voice. This is a social network and portfolio site that showcases the portfolios of musicians, photographers, writers, videographers and other artists. It seems like a very to-the-point website that has filtered out all the extra bells and whistes, and focused on the essentials. Create and customize your own multi-paged portfolio, link-up with and browse the profiles of other artists. The website is very well built and deserves a huge pat on the back, I just signed up for my account and can’t wait to start customizing it.

Well Threaded

When it comes to job posting websites most of them are a joke. Sifting through hundreds of jobs that don’t apply to your field, or for boring employers that you have no interest in working for just doesn’t work. That’s why I am keen on job boards that are very specific to one area of work and type of employer, like Well Threaded. Well Threaded is a job listing website that is specific to the fashion industry. Listing daily postings for various job positions by contemporary brand name employers. Because they are niched into one specific field, Well Threaded has the ability to monitor and be selective about the jobs that are posted. This makes for better results and higher quality job postings.

Awaken, the Alarm Alternative

Waking up to that super-annoying alarm clock beeping just doesn’t seem like the right way to start of your day. I’ve been looking for alternatives for a long time, even the radio alarm is annoying most the time. I recently got clued-in on an application for the Mac called Awaken. This nifty little app allows you to set the alarm time, and then customize a specific iTunes playlist that will slowly fade-in to the volume you choose. Not only that, but Awaken allows you to set a sleep timer as well, so you can fall asleep and awake to and music you choose.

[via: The Don]

Carbonmade, Show off Your Work

For all you designers who lack the necessary knowledge to build your own online portfolio, or perhaps simply don’t have the time, Carbonmade is the perfect solution. With its very user-friendly interface Carbonmade allows you to upload your work and organize it using your own categories. Customizing the look your portfolio is also easy, and you can even keep track of your traffic.

The “On Off” Alarm Clock

Over the past few years I have slowly gotten into the the worst habit of hitting my alarm clock snooze button a ridiculous amount of times in the morning. The people at Lexon have manufactured the “On Off” alarm clock for people like me who have trouble simply turning off their alarm and waking up. Instead of having the option of hitting a huge snooze button, and trying to find a tiny off button, the “On-Off” alarm designed by Nina Tolstrup is turned on and off by simply tilting it from side to side. The clock is super-stylish and comes in six different colors.