Website For You

The Graphic Artists Guild promotes and protects its members and is committed to improving conditions for all graphic designers and the whole industry. They also produce the well known Graphic Artists Guild Handbook which is an essential part of any designers library.

2. http://www.aiga.org/

AIGA, the professional association for design is dedicated to protecting and advancing design and its importance to society. AIGA now represents more than 19,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by more than 55 chapters and 200 student groups.


Design Tournaments

3. http://www.cutandpaste.com/events/Cut&Paste is a world wide live digital design tournament that goes on every year in multiple locations award prizes to the worlds best anonymous designers.


Generally Useful

4. http://www.lipsum.com/

This is a pretty famous site within the design community; you can generate dummy text on this site to put into your designs until the real copy is available.

5. http://www.alexa.com/

Alexa is a traffic ranking site that is widely used to research other sites. It’s not the most accurate tool but it has become common place and your Alexa rank is often a variable when determining advertising costs or site popularity.

6. http://www.csstype.com/

An incredibly useful site that shows you exactly how web fonts will look on your screen.

7. http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

This is the ultimate branding library with thousands of the worlds most famous and popular logos. Great for researching corporate identity.

8. http://www.blogsearch.google.com/

An easy way to weed out site and just find blog on the topics you are interested in.

9. http://www.digg.com/

Digg.com is a great place for offbeat news and can be in indispensable weapon in your arsenal of traffic getting tools. You can submit well written articles to dig and if it is dugg a lot and becomes popular it can bring in a substantial amount of traffic to your website for free.

10. http://www.bloglines.com/

Bloglines is a great way to organize all the blogs you read into one place instead of having to visit a bunch of different websites and is a good time saver.

11. www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Arguably the best web browser out right now. I use it for most of my web browsing but don’t forget the other browsers when it comes to optimizing your website. Not everyone uses the same browser.

12. www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

This is my favorite email client to use. It’s simple, efficient, and easy to use with solid email alert features. Very handy if you get important emails often.

13. http://www.adobe.com/

Home to the well known design software we all know and love. Good site to check out once in a while for updates and help regarding software such as Photoshop and illustrator.


Networking & Freelance Work

14. http://www.craigslist.org/

Craigslist is one of my favorite forums to use. There are tons of new design jobs and gigs added every day but the competition is stiff so bring your “A” Game.

15. http://www.getafreelancer.com/

If you are looking for an affordable but professional coder this is the place to go. Freelancers bid on projects you post.

16. http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook is growing incredibly fast and is a great way to network with other people and advertising your design services. Many professionals are moving to facebook over other social networking sites.

17. http://www.myspace.com/

Myspace has tons of potential when it comes to snagging freelance gigs or networking. They have a decently active classifieds section that you can use to market your work.

18. http://www.linkedin.com/

Linkedin is a very popular site for professionals and is a valuable networking tool.

19. http://www.krop.com/

Krop.com has a database of jobs for designers, artists, and developers with an instant and easy to use search feature.

20. http://www.coroflot.com/

Corofloat.com is a site where you can promote and host your design portfolio, search for jobs and post to hire some one.


Stock Photography

21. http://www.istockphoto.com/

This stock photography site has incredible photographers and even better prices for illustrations and photos. It will make your life way easier as a designer and has many other benefits such as making money selling your illustrations and photography, networking with other design professionals, promoting your portfolio site, access to active forums and much more!

22. http://www.corbis.com/

Corbis is one of the leading stock photography sites with millions of images online, featuring historical, fine art, business, technology, celebrity, travel, sports and nature photography.

23. http://www.shutterstock.com/

Shutter Shock is a subscription based stock photography site with over two million royalty-free stock photos available.

24. http://www.bigstockphoto.com/

Big Stock Photo lets you upload and download low-cost digital stock photography. They have well over a million photos organized into categories.

25. http://www.gettyimages.com/

Getty Images offers a large searchable collection of rights-managed or royalty-free images and films. Getty Images is a great site if you are looking for current event and public figure related photography.


Color & Charts

26. kuler.adobe.com

Kuler is a useful site to go to find color themes for your projects. Users can submit their own themes to be rated and you can search for many type of color themes.

27. http://www.colourlovers.com/

Colour Lovers is a great site with user submitted color palettes and even cooler is their blog that creates color palettes based on each blog posts at the end of every post.

28. http://www.logoorange.com/color/color-codes-chart.php
Nice chart that converts PMS colors to CMYK and RGB color codes for you.

29. http://www.ideo.com/

This extremely useful but simple web safe color chart lets you easily see exactly how different colors will look on your screen.


Inspirational Sites

30. http://www.cssbeauty.com/

CSS Beauty provides its users with a database of well designed CSS designed sites, as well as news and happenings related to the CSS Community.

31. http://www.thecoolhunter.net/

The cool hunter looks for the coolest and craziest stuff from around the world. Be sure to check out the design and art sections on the site.

32. http://www.logopond.com/

The Logo Pond is a great site to go to if you are looking for inspiration while designing a logo. You can even submit your own logo designs to be voted on and reviewed. Good way to get exposure for your studio or freelancing portfolio.

33. http://www.go2web20.net/

The Web 2.0 Design style is the big thing right now and many websites are redesigning their look to get with the times. This awesome site has a massive collection of all the new web 2.0 logos and links the websites.

34. http://www.cssvault.com/

CSS Vault has a collection of spectacular CSS websites and resources including: Articles, Demos, Layouts, Tutorials, and more.

35. http://www.stumbleupon.com/

After selecting topics of interest you can stumble upon quality sites related to those topics. I have found countless amazing sites doing this and not only is it great for finding new sites but it can be a killer way to promote and drive traffic to your own portfolio site or blog.


Portfolio Sites

36. http://www.altpick.com/

Altpic.com is a great portfolio website for artists and designers where many people come searching for the best oif the best. It is a great place to showcase your designs and talent.

37. http://www.portfolios.com/

Portfolios.com is a portfolio search site where viewers can easily browse through thousands of free artist and designer portfolios.

38. http://www.deviantart.com/

DeviantART is a large community of artists and designers who share their work with each other via an online portfolio. Many digital artists and illustrator flock to this site and you can even buy prints of your favorite artwork.


Design Magazines

39. http://www.printmag.com/

PRINT magazine is a very famous bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design.

40. http://www.howdesign.com/

HOW Magazine covers many areas of design such as the business aspect, new technologies, up and coming designers and is a place for creative inspiration.

41. http://www.idonline.com/

I.D. magazine is an International design magazine that covers products, graphics, environments, interactive media and other design related areas.

42. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/

Computer Arts is an informative site with free downloads, tutorials, galleries, competitions, a published magazine and much more.

43. http://www.maclife.com/

MacLife.com provides news and analysis of the popular Apple products and also has daily blogs from Mac Life magazine editors and a nice selection of articles to read.

44. http://www.pcmag.com/

This magazine is definitely handy for any designer. The hardware we use is the back bone of most of our work and PC Magazine has solid reviews of the leading equipment. I always look up products on their website before I buy anything.

45. http://www.pcworld.com/

PC World is a great place for Computer and Internet news and information, Resources, how-tos, downloads, products and more.


Fonts

46. http://www.dafont.com/

Dafont is an easy to use free font site with a large collection of fonts to download it. It has been around a while and is updated often with new fonts.

47. http://www.urbanfonts.com/

Urban Fonts is new to the font world but has quickly established itself as a leader in the free font community. It has an excellent design and is right up there with dafont.com in my book.

48. http://www.fontshop.com/

Font Shop offers great font collections on CD, free fonts, downloadable fonts, typography tips and more.

49. http://www.linotype.com/

Linotype has a massive collection of the most popular and well known fonts available for download. They also have a font lounge with many interesting font related resources.


Tutorials

50. http://www.pixel2life.com/

Pixel2life is one of the largest tutorial search engines on the internet providing great tutorials to graphic designers and programmers.

51. http://www.good-tutorials.com/

Good Tutorials is a massive tutorial website with tens of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and more.

52. http://www.w3schools.com/

If you need to brush up on your coding skills then this is the place to go. The information is accurate and up to date and its def worth taking all the tutorials.

53. http://www.tutorialoutpost.com/

Tutorial Outpost has a vast collection of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, 3D Studio Max, and more!


Photoshop Brushes

54. http://www.brusheezy.com/

Brusheezy is a very useful site with lots of great sets of free brushes varying in style.

55. http://www.psbrushes.net/

PS Brushes is home to over 500 Photoshop brushes that are all free to download and categorized for easy searching.

56. http://www.getbrushes.com/

Get Brushes has sets of Photoshop brushes made up of various swirls, ornamental designs, and flourishes. flowers, dots, circles, and various other ornamentations.


Printers

57. http://www.4over4.com/

4over4 is a good balance between quality and affordability and can handle most of the print jobs you would require.

58. http://www.modernpostcard.com/

Modern postcard is known for its quality printing but can be a bit pricey compared to other sites. If you are looking for top notch printing though look no further.

59. http://www.vistaprint.com/

Vista Print provides custom full color printing services. You can print business cards, Christmas cards, stationery, postcards, magnets, brochures, address labels, and even more.

60. http://www.clubflyers.com/

Club Flyers is an easy to use online printing service with many options available and fast shipping times.

61. http://www.alocalprinter.com/

If you are looking for a way to help the environment as a graphic designer then check out the new age of eco friendly printing.


Blog Hosts

62. http://www.wordpress.com/

Wordpress is my blog host of choice. It’s free and easy to set up on a server and there are tons of great themes and widgets available to use. I use Wordpress for all my blogs.

63. http://www.blogger.com/

Blogger is another very popular blog host. It has many of the same features Wordpress offers.

64. http://www.twitter.com/

Twitter is a surprisingly fun, easy to use and useful site when it comes to letting people know what you are up too.

65. http://www.squidoo.com/

Squidoo is an easy way to put up a quick and free website page about any topic you want. It is very popular in the affiliate marketing industry.

66. http://www.tumblr.com/

Tumblr is another super easy blogging tool that is very similar to Squidoo and twitter and just as good as both of them.


Blogs

67. http://www.designobserver.com/

Design Observer is a well respected site in the design community that features writings related to all aspects of design and culture.

68. http://www.lifehack.org/

This great site is dedicated to hacking your life by providing you with tips and tricks to get things done quickly by automating, organizing and increasing your productivity.

69. http://www.ilovetypography.com/

I Love Typography is a great web site devoted to typography, type, fonts and typefaces of all kinds. If you love typography you will enjoy this site.


Web Hosting

70. http://www.hostgator.com/

Host Gator is a well known, reliable and affordable web hosting company. They have a wide range of hosting services to take care of all your websites bandwidth needs.

71. http://www.godaddy.com/

Go Daddy is one of the biggest and most affordable web hosting and domain registration services. They have excellent customer service and quality servers. It is also very easy to mange you domain names and this is important if you have a lot of them.


Web Design Forums

72. forums.digitalpoint.com
This is one of the biggest and most popular programming forums around; there are many thread topics raging from coding and servers to search engine optimization and graphic design. It’s a great place to ask questions, find help or promote your services.

73. http://www.webmasterworld.com/

This is a very active and informative forum on the world of web design. It is a great place to learn and have questions answered.


Graphic Design Forums

74. http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/

This is a discussion forum dedicated to all topics related to graphic design.

75. http://www.graphic-design-forum.com/

This is another active design forum that allows you to chat about graphic design and post designs for a review.

76. http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/

This is a fine art and graphic design forum where many users showcase their work and discuss fine art and graphic design with fellow community members.


Keyword Research

77. http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

This is an extremely important free tool for keyword research. If you don’t use this tool before you launch a site or blog then your missing out. They also have a more extensive paid version.

78. http://www.wordze.com/

This is another powerful keyword research tool.

79. www.google.com/trends

Google Trends is another good way to research keywords. Some keywords tend to be seasonal so you can check to see if certain keywords tend to fluctuate traffic wise at certain times of the year.


Search Engine Optimization

80. http://www.seomoz.org/

SEOmoz serves as a central hub for search engine marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services related to search engine optimization and marketing.

81. http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

This is probably one of the most informative sites I have ever come across in terms of search engine optimization. It literally changed my life.

82. http://www.seroundtable.com/

SEO Roundtable reports on interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. They also write many articles on the topic of search engine optimization and marketing.


Advertising

83. www.google.com/adsense

Google Adsense is a powerhouse in the advertising industry. If you are looking for an easy way to monetize our website or blog then you will definitely want to check this site out.

84. http://www.adbrite.com/

Adbrite is a popular and easy to use text link advertising website where you can buy text link spots or make money by selling advertisement space on your site.

85. http://www.adengage.com/

A place to buy and sell text link ads on popular websites related to your website or blog.

86. http://www.text-link-ads.com/

This is another very popular and easy to use text link advertising site where people can easily purchase advertising space on your blog or website.


Computers & Electronics

87. http://www.apple.com/

Apple computers are a standard in the design industry and they are a great choice if you are looking for an alternative to personal computers.

88. http://www.newegg.com/

I love checking new egg for products because of their fair prices and customer reviews.

89. http://www.tigerdirect.com/

Another great site if you are shopping for anything electronic. They have affordable prices and a wide selection of products to choose from.

90. http://www.amazon.com/

Amazon is fast and reliable and is my favorite online store to buy books from. Delivery is always top notch.


Art Supplies

91. http://www.dickblick.com/

Dick Blick Art Materials has been providing artists with the best supplies since 1911. They have a huge selection of merchandise and good prices.

92. http://www.pearlpaint.com/

Pearl Paint is one of the world’s largest discount art suppliers and has a vast selection of art supplies at very affordable prices.

93. http://www.aifriedman.com/

A.I. Friedman is another great business that has been serving the artist community for over 70 years. Their products range from basic art supplies to studio equipment and furniture.


Graphic and Web Design Books

94. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

By Adrian Shaughnessy

95. Thinking with Type

By Ellen Lupton

96. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography

By David Jury

97. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook

By Graphic Artists Guild

98. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition

By Elizabeth Castro

99. Bulletproof Web Design

By Dan Cederholm

100.Smashing Magazine

Pioneer of Web 2.0

Time to reach

It’s time to toss the old tube to the dumpster. Well, not if you have one of those 47” plasma ones, but…you know what we mean. The future of media is the Internet, and television is no exception. Instead of browsing through the channels with your remote, you could be browsing through the free online TV providers on your computer - hell, if you like, you can watch them all at once (in really tiny windows). It’s time to reach out and see how much free online TV we can find.

YouTube
Well, duh. We had to start with the big one. Not much to say here except: user uploaded videos, lots and lots of them, all free. Yeah, and lawsuits, too.

Joost
Another much-hyped favorite from the authors of Skype is still in beta stage, but i actually delivers on all fronts: P2P system for delivering content; solid amounts of good content, great GUI, almost glitch-free work, quality video. If you can snag an invite, you’ll be in for a treat.

Babelgum is similar to Joost in two ways: P2P-based content delivery, and free but ad-supported content. The service is in open beta, and everyone is free to try it out, although the amount of daily downloads is limited. Channels include news, music, documentaries, sports, animation, and others. The content plays smoothly, and the interface is great, although not as polished as Joost’s. Hint: don’t give up if the video doesn’t start immediately; it takes some time to buffer it and there’s no visible indication that it’s happening.

Zattoo
A p2p-based online television with a downloadable client focused on European (over 50) channels. Unfortunately, it won’t work if you’re not from one of the supported countries.

Veoh
Veoh has a slightly different concept than other services on this list. Their downloadable player acts like a VCR: you can save movies to it for later viewing. Although it’s possible to watch videos online on the Flash version of the Veoh player, the focus is on offline (or at least desktop) viewing, and videos longer than 45 minutes can be viewed only on the desktop player. Available videos include both user generated content as well as professionally produced, sometimes copyrighted stuff.

NGTV
NGTV, which is short for No Good TV, is the television you don’t want your daughter to watch. Or at least it tries to leave that impression: in reality, it’s similar to what kids see on TV everyday: lots of music & entertainment, lots of foul language, and long, long intros for every episode.

Democracy is actually a media player which you can use to watch media files on your hard drive. But, the difference is in that it also lets you connect to all of the big video hosting sites and many independent publishers. Finally, it’s a media organizer, which lets you bundle all that offline and online videos into one neat collection. The result is a great online video experience that’s not quite as effortless as Joost, but it sure beats visiting all those video sites and podcasts and looking for stuff by hand.

EpisodeNetwork
Episode network is a large link list, pointing to videos around the web. They’re not hosting any of the videos on the site; but bear in mind that since the material includes blockbusters and entire TV series downloading the stuff might be just a tad illegal.

Dailymotion
One of the biggest video sharing sites around, Dailymotion is as old as YouTube, and nearly as successful. Unlike YouTube, it’s still not sued by every media powerhouse under the sun, so you can still find a lot of good stuff there. For a list of TV series available at Dailymotion, check out this site.

Google Video
Although Google has bought YouTube and Google Video is slowly fading out of the picture, it’s still a very large video sharing site with tons of content and an UI that wouldn’t mind a makeover.

BlinkX is a video/audio search engine which claims to have indexed over 12 million hours of video. Since it’s a search engine, you’re hardly gonna be able to sit back, relax and enjoy the shows, but it’s great for finding that elusive video you think you saw three weeks ago but you were too drunk to remember what’s it’s called or what’s it about.

ChannelChooser
A windows media player based video portal offering a large selection of TV channels. Simple layout and interface, very little annoyance.

Freetube
Freetube is one of those sites that keep it simple: no downloads, no subscriptions: only lots of neatly categorized shows. It didn’t work all that well for me, but some users say that it’s their favorite service, so try it out.

Televee
A shoddy and confusing (actually, largely nonexistant) interface on this one ruins much of the fun, but if you manage to find them, there are some good shows here (watching Prison Break as I write this).

Guba is a combination of video sharing and video rental, which means you’ll have to pay for some of the content. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of good stuff to be found in the free part of the site. GUBA enables download of the videos to your PC, iPod, PSP, and other portable devices. The site is also unique for the fact that it finds content on USENET groups.

WWITV
A directory of links to TV streams, organized by country. You might get a bit frustrated using it because many of those streams don’t work, and they come in a variety of formats. The directory itself is quite comprehensive, covering most of the world’s countries with at least one channel.

Blip.TV
Blip.TV is a video sharing site that focuses on user-crated shows. This means less noise and more coherence than YouTube, and some of the stuff on here is, indeed, quite enjoyable. A great place to find the next Spielberg, or at the very least the next Larry Clark.

ChannelKing
Another list of streams with an insultingly tiny Windows Media Player to watch the content in. Use only if desperate.

Stage6 is a video sharing site built to demonstrate the quality of the DivX codec. It sports a sleek interface and a large selection of videos. You’ll need a special plugin to access the videos - the DivX web player - but the quality of DivX-encoded videos makes it worth your while.

TVUnetworks
TCUnetworks is a China-based P2P TV company, which means you’re mostly be able to find Chinese channels there, but some of the content is in English, too.

Don’t Watch Me
A very rudimentary list of links to various video content.

Tape It Off The Internet
Tape If Off The Internet, or shorter TIOTI, is a service for tracking your favorite TV shows. The service has been around for a long time - since 2005 - and it’s still in beta, which is not a good sign. Read our initial coverage here.

Streamick
While the page itself is just a (quite ugly, we might add) collection of links to various streams, there is some good content to be found here.

TV Links
TV Links is another one of those which fall under the “can this possibly be legal?” category. It’s a nicely organized collection of links to episodes to popular TV shows. Enjoy it while it lasts.

ABC
A selection of ABC shows, will work only for visitors from the United States.

Free Movies Cinema
A carefully handpicked selection of rare and interesting movies collected from various online sources. It’s a small but intelligent selection, and most movies on the list are definitely worth watching.

PeekVid
A selection of downloadable TV shows and movies, including some very popular ones like Buffy, 24, Pimp My Ride and others. Also includes a quite comprehensive selection of anime.

Fox MySpace
On its MySpace page, Fox is offering several of its popular TV shows for free - if you’re located in the United States. Some love for the Europeans, please?

TV Video
A nicely organized list of episodes from the most popular current shows, like Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, and 24. Is it legal? We don’t know, but it’s there. Make sure to expand that tiny video player to (almost) fullscreen size.

We all want to become faster and more efficient – but it often seems like there’s no time to make improvements to the way we work. We can laugh at the self-defeating nature of this circular logic, but that doesn’t get us any closer to a practical solution.

Five easy ways to boost your productivity

1. Zero your inboxIf you can, answer emails right away. If not, file them into folders for bulk-reply sessions. Don’t just let your inbox mushroom, or important emails may get lost in the flood.

2. Don’t reinvent the wheelIf some high-quality, proven and suitable mechanism already exists for something you’re trying to do, and you’re legally entitled to use it, do so, be it a coding library or CMS. If you can create components usable over multiple projects, do so to save working on the same thing over and over.

3. Hone things downIf a client wants a 50-page site and you can see a way of doing it in 10, tell them and convince them to do so. Smaller sites are typically more creative, and offer more clarity and focus.

4. Avoid interruptionsQuit your email client and browsers when you want to fully focus on some design work. At all other times, work with passive communication, so you communicate when you want to. Avoid interrupting others, unless the matter is extremely urgent and simply can’t wait for an extra hour.

5. Get away from your computer

Inspiration rarely comes from staring at a monitor for hours. So walk, visit exhibitions and read, rather getting all your ‘inspiration’ from other websites. Also avoid the temptation to start with the computer. Instead, design and plan freely with paper and a pencil. Work fast and don’t linger – you may find ideas come surprisingly easily.

Five tools to help you design better sites

1. Basecamp

Of 37signals’ portfolio, it’s web- based project management tool Basecamp that comes in for the most praise. “We couldn’t work without it,” says Happy Cog’s Jeff Zeldman. “We use it to collaborate with local and remote partners, keep track of deadlines, and even handle the bulk of our client communications.”

2. Firefox Web Developer toolbar

If you work on standard web pages, you’ve probably already got this installed. If not, you’re missing the means to efficiently and effectively test page components from within a standards- compliant browser.

3. Subversion
This popular open source version- control system enables designers and developers to maintain versions of code. As Andy Budd notes, “This enables you to keep up to date with the latest version of project files, which is especially useful if you’re working with external developers, or if you’ve got a distributed team.”

4. Silverback
This new kid on the block is a ‘guerrilla usability testing app’, enabling you to run low-cost usability tests with hardware you already have in your Mac. It records screen activity, video, audio and mouse clicks, and you can use the Apple remote to define chapter markers when usability problems are encountered. Once tests are finished, video and data is exported to QuickTime for analysis.

5. Pen and paperSeriously. Turn off your computer, go for a walk, and sketch some ideas, rather than staring blindly at Photoshop or Fireworks, gradually turning your mouse hand into a gnarled claw.

In this post, you’ll find 10 free tools to help you evaluate and correct issues which decrease your website’s accessibility. There was a high emphasis on the ease-of-use during the selection of these tools.

1. Firefox Accessibility Extension
The Firefox Accessibility Extension is a Firefox toolbar that allows you to inspect every aspect of a web page to determine its accessibility. A helpful toolbar feature is the Text Equivalents menu which allows you to generate lists of elements such as images and links to see whether each are standards-compliant. You can also launch 3rd party applications such as the WC3 HTML Validator and Link Checker services directly from the toolbar.

2. aDesigner
aDesigner, developed by IBM, simulates the experience of visually-impaired individuals so that designers can better understand how a web page is interpreted by screen readers. It has a plenty of features including a summary and detailed report of compliancy to web accessibility guidelines and simulations for blind or low-vision impairment.

3. EvalAccess
EvalAccess is a web-based service for testing your website’s accessibility. You can either point to a web page, an entire website, or directly enter your HTML source code. It checks your mark-up against the WC3’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) and provides a summary of the number of errors and warnings and a breakdown of each error.

4. WebAnywhere
WebAnywhere is a browser-based web application that works similarly to screen readers such as JAWS. It’s an excellent way to see how a web page is read and navigated by assistive technologies.

5. Web Accessibility Inspector
The Web Accessibility Inspector, developed by Fujitsu, is a desktop application that indicates web accessibility issues. You can specify a file, folder, or URL to run the inspection on. It has the “View on the screen” option which opens the web page in a browser window with markers that point out elements that have issues.

6. Vischeck
Vischeck simulates how a web page or image will look if viewed by people affected with color-blindness. It simulates three types of color-blindness. You can conduct the test by entering a URL or uploading images.

7. Accessibility Color Wheel
The Accessibility Color Wheel is a web-based tool to help you select the background color and font color. You can enter the hexadecimal values of the colors you want to test, or you can hover over the color wheel to select colors.

8. Colour Contrast Analyser
The Colour Contrast Analyser, developed by Juicy Studio, is a Firefox extension (currently in alpha) that checks all the elements in the Document Object Model for color contrast to insure that content is accessible by people who are color-blind or affected by other visual-impairments. It uses the color and brightness differences algorithm suggested by the WC3 “Techniques For Accessibility Evaluation And Repair Tools” (AERT).

Juicy Studio also has other web accessibility evaluation tools such as the Readability Test, CSS Analyser, and Image Analyser.

9. TAW Web Accessibility Test
The TAW Web Accessibility Test evaluates your website’s accessibility based on the WCAG 1.0. It marks trouble spots directly on the web page, allowing you to quickly see where the errors are. Clicking on the error/warning indicator will bump you down to a summary of the issue. It’s a great way to visualize the areas of a web page that needs work.

10. Web Accessibility Toolbar
The Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT) is an extension for Internet Explorer or Opera that offers designers a ton of useful tools and features to help in the analysis of a web page’s accessibility. One helpful feature is the Greyscale (Colour > Greyscale) feature which renders the web page in black in white to help you find low-contrast spots in the design.

Here are 11 sites where you can trade your old - and sometimes dead - gadgets in for actual money, gift cards, and even charitable donations to your favorite causes.

BestBuyTradeIn.com - Electronics superstore Best Buy will allow you to trade in a wide range of products in exchange for gift cards you can spend with their company.

BuyMyTronics.com - BuyMyTronics will buy your gadgets from you whether they work or not. Of course, you get paid more the better their condition, but they will even take the broken ones. Can pay by PayPal or check.

Costco Trade-In and Recycle Program - In addition to taking gadgets like iPods, Costco will also accept desktops, laptops, fax machines, printers and more. Payment is in the form of Costco gift cards and can take up to four weeks to process.

EZTradein.com - EZTradein powers some of the biggest trade-in programs out there, or you can just simply go directly to the source. Payment can be made via check, PayPal or a Best Buy gift card.

Gazelle.com - Besides the smaller gadgets, Gazelle will take external hard drives, GPS devices, satellite radios, Blu-ray movies and more. If your item isn’t listed, you can contact them for a personalized quote. Payment can be made via Amazon gift card, checks, PayPal or you can even opt to have the funds donated to one of the charities they work with.

MyBoneYard.com - MyBoneYard takes desktops, laptops, flat panel monitors, MP3 players and cell phones with more items to be added soon. Payment is by Visa prepaid cards.

NextWorth.com - NextWorth takes iPods and iPhones, and pays you by check, Amazon gift card or in-store credit when you trade the device in at one of their retail partners.

RadioShack.cexchange.com - RadioShack, one of the oldest electronics dealers around, will let you trade in your old gadgets, games, consoles and more, and offers gift cards you can spend at their stores.

Sam’s Club - The wholesale club arm of the Walmart corporation will trade your electronics for gift cards for their company.

Toshiba - Toshiba will take in numerous items such as laptops, camcorders, PDAs and so on, paying you by check and sometimes throwing in an extra item like a $25 gift card to Starbucks.

VenJuvo.com - VenJuvo will take all of the usual major items like game systems, HDTVs, laptops and so on, and then you can choose to be paid by check, PayPal or donate the funds to a charity.