eBizMBA: 25 Most Popular eBusiness Websites

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/ebusiness.html
"Here are the 25 Largest eBusiness Websites ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. Although no traffic metrics are completely accurate we do believe the data below to be useful for gauging relative audience size.[The websites included on this list that focus on specific aspects of ebusiness, like SEO or General Tech, have been selected to our "eBusiness" list based on the frequency of general eBusiness news & info that they publish. To that end we would like to mention three great publications, SEOMOZ, SearchEngineWatch, & Search Engine Roundtable who did not make this list becuse of their exclusive SEO focus.]"

Colour Lovers: Landmark Colors: The Great Barrier Reef

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/08/27/landmark-colors-the-great-barrier-reef/
"The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the world’s largest coral reef system, composed of roughly 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for 2,600 kilometers (1,616 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometers (132,974 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland in northeast Australia, and can be seen from space."

Luke W Interface Designs: Primary & Secondary Actions in Web Forms

http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/PSactions.asp
"In recent months, I’ve been working on refining the design recommendations in my upcoming book, Web Form Design Best Practices, through actual usage data. To that end, I’ve had the pleasure of working with London-based usability firm Etre on several eye-tracking and usability studies focused on specific aspects of Web form design. One of these tests focused on the distinction between primary and secondary actions."

Boxes and Arrows: Foundations of Interaction Design

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/foundations-of
"Somehow, products, services, and systems need to respond to stimuli created by human beings. Those responses, need to be meaningful, and clearly communicated and in many ways provoke a persuasive and semi-predictable response. They need to behave."

Merlin Mann: Google Tech Talk: Inbox Zero

http://www.43folders.com/2007/07/25/merlins-inbox-zero-talk/
"Video for Merlin’s “Inbox Zero” talk"

Web Appers: Sweet Titles Transparent and Fading Tooltips

http://www.webappers.com/2007/08/23/sweet-titles-transparent-and-fading-tooltips/
"Sweet Titles Fading Tooptips is not a knock-off from NICE Titles nor is it trying to improve on Dunstan’s revised attempt. And it most definitely isn’t ripped from one of those event-handler infested scripts from Dynamic Drive . No. It’s none of those. Instead he had two goals for this script"

Free CSS Templates: Contact Forms Showcase

http://www.free-css-templates.com/webdesign/contact-forms-showcase/
"Often we neglect the design of contact forms, so here is the contact forms showcase that will give you some inspiration ;)"

Smashing Magazine: 20+ Free And Fresh Icon Sets

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/25/20-free-and-fresh-icon-sets/
"User-friendly icon sets are always nice to look at and useful to have ready to hand. Since effective designers guide their users’ attention using visuals, icons can (and probably should) be used in almost every project you are or will be working on. Whether for an illustration, sketch, site or weblog - used moderately, icons can point users’ attention to the key-aspects of an article or specific site sections and communicate the message of the site in a more effective way."

43 Folders: Better Presentations

http://www.43folders.com/2007/08/23/better-presentations/
"Since my Google Tech Talk (previously) caught fire last month (it’s gotten over 100,000 views so far), I’ve been receiving a lot of really nice email, comments, and questions about how I put my presentations together. I’m happy to oblige."

Colour Lovers: Color inspiration from coffee and tea

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/08/24/color-inspiraton-from-coffee-and-tea/
"There is a very clever mug that has been popping up on all my favorite sites lately (Neatorama, swissmiss, Gizmodo ). The MyCuppa “mugs to help you mix your favourite brew to just-how-you-like-it by matching the colour guide on the inside. Available in Tea or Coffee styles.”"

Veerle's Blog: A CSS styled table version 2

http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/a_css_styled_table_version_2/
"In 2005 I wrote an article about styling a table with CSS. After receiving so many requests I finally decided to give in and write another tutorial. Seems like a popular topic and an interesting one to share some tricks on how you can nicely style them. This article is about the proper usage of tables, for tabular data. How you can implement them with accessibility in mind and how to make them appealing for the eye using CSS."

Typographica.org. A journal of typography.

http://typographica.org/
"Typographica is a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design."

3point7designs: WEB TYPOGRAPHY - 40 SOURCES FOR INSPIRATION AND INSTRUCTION

http://www.3point7designs.com/blog/2007/08/16/web-typography-50-sources-for-inspiration-and-instruction/
"CSS, javascript, and flash has brought the web design community a long way in what we are capable of doing when it comes to typography. However simply being ABLE to take advantage of rich typography doesn’t mean that we all know how. So below are some resources to make it easier to find typographic inspiration and instruction."

Idents.tv

http://idents.tv/blog/
"If you interested in general typography on screen, idents.tv at http://idents.tv/blog/ has TV idents (who’d’ave guessed it) which are usually good use of typography."

Motionographer

http://motionographer.com/
"Motionographer (pronounced like “oceanographer”) seeks to be a source of inspiration for filmmakers, animators and designers by sharing:

• outstanding work from studios, freelancers and students
• feature stories that give readers a closer look at influential studios and individuals
• commentary that sparks discussion or introspection about the creative process
• miscellaneous items that Motionographer contributors find interesting

Motionographer isn’t just about motion graphics. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and the Motionographer contributors hope to provide you with interesting material regardless of the medium in which it was created."

Smashing Magazine: 10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/10/10-designers-checkpoints-to-be-aware-of/
"Automatic tests, checks and analysis services can be extremely valuable if you’re looking for bugs or try to avoid them. To make sure everything is just the way you think it should be, you need validators. To improve the value and quality of your content, you need to be able to analyze the behaviour of your visitors. And to perform better in the future you have to know exactly, what your competitors are doing, how they’re doing it and what you should learn from them."

Smashing Magazine: Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/
"Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years."

Collection of all Calvin and Hobbes strips, in chronological order

http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/index.html
"Calvin & Hobbes was published from Nov 18th, 1985 to Dec 31st, 1995. Here's the collection."

Smashing Magazine: 404 Error Pages: Reloaded

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/17/404-error-pages-reloaded/
" Three weeks ago we’ve showcased some of the most beautiful, creative and user-friendly 404 Error Pages; we’ve collected some interesting ideas one can use to help out the visitors once they got lost ony your page. We’ve also asked our readers to design their own 404 pages and promised to present the best solutions afterwards."

StyleGrind:

http://stylegrind.com/
"Style Grind is the brain dump of Peter Dorsi (who also runs Age of Conan News) who just needed a place to find great web news in one convenient spot. We hope you enjoy the site and if you have a site with some tutorials or a great design, pass it along to us.

We are hosted on lighting fast PHP and Ruby on Rails servers from Site5."

Freelance Switch: 34 Places to Get Design Inspiration - Online and Off

http://freelanceswitch.com/working/34-places-to-get-design-inspiration-online-and-off
"Everyone who hasn’t encountered designer’s block, raise your hand. Just as I thought. Well then, chances are you could use some places to get inspiration for those days when the pixels aren’t aligned and your mouse finger isn’t clicking like it should. We’ve compiled a list, online and off to serve up everything from logos to icons to art to fashion to just inventive ideas to get your mind ticking. So kick back and let your senses run wild as we bring you 15 websites packed full of inspiration, 10 must-have books and 9 things to do to get inspired."

Pixel Implosio - portfolio

http://pixelimplosion.com/portfolio/
"The Pixel Implosion is a small, Denver-based graphic factory. It's so small that, in fact, Bobby Andersen is the sole employee. Despite this lack of manpower, the 'implosion and Bobby Andersen have been known to create all sorts of things for clients, such as interfaces, web sites, icons or anything else that has been thrown at them. The company has built its foundation on the pursuit of pixel perfection and a never-ending ambition."

Manhole covers

http://manhole-covers.net/galerie/slide.php3?f=0
"These manhole covers have been prior chosen for their esthetic interest. So, this galerie doesn't pretend to be an exhaustiv view of french old patterns. Models slightly similars or without visual attraction are simply not shown yet.
The city name mentionned for each, is the name of the place where the picture has been taken
Some of these models have been removed since I made these pictures, during the 80's, and can't be seen anymore in situ."

Colour Lovers: Colors of the World's Best First Class Experiences

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/08/16/colors-of-the-worlds-best-first-class-experiences/
"Have you ever flown first class? Have you ever really wished you could? Well, the top ten from Forbes’ World’s Best First Class article seems to shoot down every actually-comfortable, well-padded seat I’ve walked past. From bed-chairs to private nooks, Heaven seems to recline at 40,000ft."

Foldspy: Get the most from your ads with FoldSpy.

http://www.foldspy.com/
"Put simply, FoldSpy is a tool for finding out the actual dimensions of your visitor’s browser window. This data was surprisingly difficult to get your hands on, but not any more. Not only does FoldSpy give you access to this data but it presents it in completely new way, the data from FoldSpy is overlayed on your site."

portfolio.com: Bloomberg makeover

http://www.portfolio.com/infographics/2007/06/terminals
"These terminals area a must-have for any Wall Street warrior, but they're also unsightly. We asked three top design firms-IDEO, thehappycorp, and Ziba Design-to put the Bloomberg's interface through a rigorous redesign."

WebAppers: Javascript/CSS progress bar

http://www.webappers.com/progressBar/
"Sometimes, when we are building websites and web applications, we need a percentage bar / progress bar to show the progress of a specific task. However, it is very difficult to find a working and easy solution without using Flash. Therefore WebAppers have created a simple Javascript based Percentage Bar / Progress Bar which is inspired by Bare Naked App. Bare Naked App taught us how to display Percentage Bar with 2 images only by using CSS. And then I used a little bit of Javascript to make it more interactive. You can use it anywhere you can think of. Use your Imagination, I am sure you will find it useful somewhere."

Functioning Form: Strategic Skills of Designers

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?568
"In a recent workshop, I outlined how designers can apply their existing skills to strategic work. The natural follow on question is: what are these skills?"

Rob Goodlatte: JUSTIFYING DESIGN DECISIONS

http://www.robgoodlatte.com/2007/06/27/justifying-design-decisions/
"The craft of graphic design is replete with ratios, rules of thumb, and math—all an attempt to rationalize decisions that otherwise fall to subjectivity. Finding justification for design decisions is important to me—I want to bring purpose and intent to my work and depend less on taste and opinion. But I often find myself designing on impulse or intuition—pushing pixels around the screen or lines down a sketchpad with no structure, no rationalization— just because it “looks right”. That haphazard and experimental process gives me a lot of freedom, but it isn’t really design."

Digital Web Magazine: Corporate Web Standards

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/corporate_web_standards/
"We’ve all heard the fairy-tales about the prince kissing the princess, but the story just ends there; they both live happily ever after, riding off into the sunset, never to be seen again. But in real life, that’s just the beginning of the story—after the kiss and the sunset comes the hard work and the real relationship."

CSS Juice: 30 Weblogs with Grid Based Design

http://cssjuice.com/30-weblogs-with-grid-based-design/
"Grid based designs is more popular and hot in the internet. A basic well designed grid systems layout can make your designs not only more beautiful and legible, but more usable. A grid is made up of vertical and horizontal lines and is the foundation of nearly every type of visual media. The structure is there to shape the content into proportions that are pleasing to the eye. Below is the top 30 weblogs with grid based designs. Besides, i also searched some tutorials about grid designs for you to further reading."

artzmania: artwork showcase for global designers

http://www.artzmania.com/
"Artzmania is an independent venture showcasing outstanding international creativity and culture. With blazing passion for design, it is the latest platform for Designer's Territory to inspire, express and share with fellow art enthusiast profiling diversified design.

Founded in January 2007 by a team of arts and graphic enthusiasts in Malaysia and exclusively supported by Spotbit.com, Artzmania.com was officially launched in January 2007

This super e-zine has attracted international designers in their quest to showcase their superb creativity through design and arts and is distributed on worldwide platform for all walks of life to enjoy. It is widely recognized as one of the most successful free e-zine in the web.

Artzmania team welcomes all who enjoy this super e-zine and thank all the contributors. If you would like to be part of them in contributing your design and arts, we welcome you to contact us. If you have general query about Artzmania, please send your email here."

Digital Web Magazine: Designing the "Future Of" Sites

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/designing_the_future_of/
"I’m passionate about branding. At my previous company, Apples To Oranges, we were fortunate to be able to do a lot of branding and identity projects—either creating new brands, or evolving existing ones. As designers, our work never sits in a vacuum. Each piece is part of the brand’s visual identity. It’s our job to ensure the sites we design not only look good, but also reinforce and communicate the message of the brand."

Spotbit: Paperless publishing

http://www.spotbit.com/main/inside_search.php?&title=3
" Spotbit empowers you to publish, sell your e-books in a fast, easy and free method.

Spotbit.com provides paperless solution to publishing industry which end result is an E-Book make available in a unique and standalone digital format that is different from most formats available in the current market."

Smashing Magazine: 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/08/80-beautiful-fonts-typefaces-for-professional-design/
"You don’t like to scroll? Be prepared. (We warned you.)

Every now and again designers stumble upon the very same problem: the choice of a unique and beautiful typeface which manages to fulfill three basic tasks. Support the corporate identity, enrich the visual appearance and is compatible with the overall design. However, usually there are simply too many options you can consider, which is why you need time to find the option you are most comfortable with. Although the choice usually depends on clients’ requirements, it is necessary to have some pretty starting points for your font decision."

CSS Juice: Modern Navigation Menu Solutions

http://cssjuice.com/modern-navigation-menu-solutions/
"A stunning navigation menu can take your websites interface to the next level. At the previous post i had selected a complete list of free professional CSS navigation menus, just check out here if you are interesting. Here we presented some great and snazzy navigation menus that it might be useful for you to the next design projects. They are categorized to font hovering, graphical hovering, illustration, underline, artistic fonts, strike-through and miscellaneous. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any more nice examples that can be featured on this list."

maryland media: Logic Based Design - Design is 50% Selling

http://blog.marylandmedia.com/2007/08/logic-based-design-design-is-50-selling/
"Imagine a world were design wasn’t subjective; imagine a world were design intentions were in-sync with design executions. A design’s worst enemy is not the input of a non-designer – a design’s worst enemy is when its designer can’t sell it. Design is only half the process, being able to sell that design is where the real work gets done. Without being able to sell your design to its audience; your design intentions will never match its execution."

design snips: collecting snippets of good design

http://designsnips.com/?feed_src=27
"design|snips first days have been very successful and both the website’s design and concept have gotten a very favorable response. We’ve already broken past the 200 subscriber count!

Thanks to everyone who’s been visiting and submitting, don’t worry, improvements and feature additions are on the way."

modern life: Six of the best: Recommended Reads

http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/six-of-the-best-recommended-reads
"Summer has always been somewhat of a quiet time on the blogging front, with folk jetting off on holiday and enjoying the sunshine - anything other than being cooped up indoors writing."

Lifehacker: Top 10 PDF Tricks

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-pdf-tricks-289583.php
"The PDF file format is one of the best ways to publish, save and exchange well-formatted documents that will look exactly the same regardless of the device or computer you open them on. Whether it's your résumé, a tax form, e-book, user guide or a web page, you can't go wrong using a PDF. Chances are you've already got a free PDF reader installed on your computer, but you can do a lot more with your PDF files than you might think. Hit the jump for our top 10 list of techniques for converting, exchanging, sharing, managing and editing PDF documents."

CSS Juice: 10 Websites with Shabby Design Approach

http://cssjuice.com/10-websites-with-shabby-design-approach/
"Normally, we prefer to the new and stylish web design. But is it time to change your mind? Here is a list of websites with shabby style design approach that has acquired a great success. It is a fresh idea with an excellent old designed interface indeed."

Outlaw Design: 10 Inspiring Website Branding Images

http://outlawdesignhosting.com/designblog/10-inspiring-website-branding-images/
"We have all heard the old saying, “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” While that couldn’t be more true, it’s a simple fact that we all do it. We take a quick glance at books, movies, clothes, etc and decide in an instant if it’s worth our time to look at; websites are no different."

Particletree: The Importance of Design in Business

http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in-business/
"Most of the debates on the importance of design in business are usually focused on how aesthetics affect a business’s bottom line. Whether it’s Facebook vs Myspace or Microsoft vs Apple, the argument is a lot like the infamous invisibility vs flight hypothetical. With absolutely no data, it can be argued on several levels and, in the end, often say more about the person than the companies involved."

Deziner Folio

http://www.dezinerfolio.com/
" Dezinerfolio is a site run by Navdeep and Naveen (brothers) from Bangalore, India. We love to share Quality Information and that is why we are up here... Hope you enjoy this site."

Wisdump: The Beauty of Sketch Design

http://wisdump.com/design-critiques/the-beauty-of-sketch-design/
"Sketch Design is what I call it when a web designer uses techniques that go beyond standard web graphical elements. Your standard elements are buttons and banners that generally try to mimic a real world texture, whether it be plastic or glass or something along those lines. This is a tried and true technique that is certainly the one that I employ the most. However, a newer breed of designer is using a more classic technique."

Design Meltdown: The Design Element

http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/Personal/
"The personal site might also be known as the ego site. These are sites that show lots of information about an individual. Often they combine a typical portfolio with other information about the owner. Things like a personal blog, photos, and other information that extends beyond what you typically provide for a normal job seeking portfolio type site. Yeah, many of these sites are intended to promote the individual in their career, but others seem to have an excess of information just for the sake of putting it out there. Probably for family and friends to consume."

Derek Bender: 36 Inspirational Business & Corporate Websites

http://blog.derekbender.com/36-inspirational-business-corporate-websites/
"One of the best things to do when you run into a design block is to step away, take a breath and look at something else for awhile. There are a lot of great sites out there to get inspiration from but most of these sites are design related with bright colors, amazing design elements and a certain style that would be frowned upon by a client who would like a corporate business site. Good corporate and business websites are few and far between. Lawyers, accountants, restaurants, churches, organizations and other non-creative businesses should also be able to have great websites too."

Design Meltdown: Designer Portfolios Part 5

http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/Portfolio/Part5.aspx
"In the last edition of Designer Portfolios I encouraged people to try something "crazy." Believe it or not I got a bit of negative feedback from this. I feel compeled to clarify my point. I don't think portfolios should be some insane brain child that becomes so hard to use that it is no longer an effective portfolio. Instead, I think your personal portfolio is your chance to spread your wings, and loose the hold other people have on our design work. All to often clients beat our designs into things we never really intended, we live to serve them. So your portfolio is your chance to do what you want, to refelct your personality, to show that you can do something more conceptual and on the edge then your normal design allows for. Again, my real point is to just have fun with it."

Built With: Find out what a web site is based on

http://builtwith.com

"Web Page Technology Profiler

Find out what a site is built with."

Tutorial Blog: 10 Websites with Great Photography

http://tutorialblog.org/10-websites-with-great-photography/
"Photography can make or break a website - got a great site with lame pictures, then you’ve got a lame website. Today we’re going to take a look at the ones that got it right…"

Information Architects Japan

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/
"iA is a strategic design agency in Tokyo, Japan. We analyze business goals, user needs and develop interfaces that match. We believe that:"

Lifehacker: Note Taking: A Beginner's Guide to Mind Mapping Meetings

http://lifehacker.com/software/note-taking/a-beginners-guide-to-mind-mapping-meetings-288763.php
"Do you have trouble keeping up with meetings because you can't take notes as fast as the speaker talks? If you do jot down some thoughts and ideas, by the time you re-read your notes they make no sense? If this sounds like you, a meeting mind map may be just what you need. Here is a quick start guide that will give you some pointers and a printable template you can use to get off to a great start with mind mapping."

Smashing Magazine: Best of July 2007

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/14/best-of-july-2007/
"Every month we take a look around and select some of the most interesting web-development-related web-sites. We read articles, check out tools, analyze the advantages of new resources. Below you’ll find useful references, tutorials, services, tools, techniques and articles we’ve found over the last 30 days - an overview of web-sites you shouldn’t"

The New York Times: What's Your Sign? (Testing type on road signs)

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/12/magazine/20070812_CLEARVIEW_2.html
"Signs are ubiquitous. Drivers say that they would like to see less clutter and more readability, but there is something that seems untouchable about this layer of information in the landscape."

Stephen King: The last word on Harry Potter

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20044270_20044274_20050689,00.html
"Now that the dust has settled on ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' Stephen King reflects on why no review did it justice, and whether kids (and their grown-ups) will ever read the same way again"

ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online

http://mashable.com/2007/08/09/online-business/
"Forget useless desktop apps and piles of paperwork: there are now thousands of small and medium-sized businesses managing all their affairs with online applications. After an exhaustive hunt this week, we’ve rounded up more than 230 of the leading online applications for super-productive companies."

Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design Revisited:

http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/92/shoppingcart.html
"A list of common mistakes with e-commerce shopping cart design were identified in a previous issue of Usability News. This article revisits that list and reviews how 500 of the top Internet retail sites of today implemented their shopping cart design. "

No More Hard Drive! 100 Free Software Apps to Go Online-Only

http://www.tzunami.com/No-More-Harddrive.php
"The internet revolution was supposed to be about universalizing computing. So why is it that despite the fact that you can do virtually anything from anywhere through the Net, most of us are still tethered to our computer because of the need for access to basic desktop software?"

Online Matters: Simplicity FTW!

http://www.poweredbygamespy.com/blog/archive/simplicity_for_the_win
"I was recently listening to Science Friday on NPR and heard a fantastic interview with John Maeda, Associate Director of Research at The Media Lab at MIT. During the interview Maeda discussed his book The Laws of Simplicity."

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Free Wallpaper, Fonts and Icon Sources

http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-free-wallpaper-fonts-and-icon-sourceshe-287069.php
"Spicing up your computer desktop or documents is a cinch with the right fonts, wallpaper or icon set - but finding the best ones isn't an easy task. Googling free wallpaper or fonts turns up a gaggle of random sites with flashy ads and mediocre art. In retaliation, today we've gathered up our favorite sources of quality, good-looking free desktop wallpaper images, fonts and icons for your downloading pleasure."

Colour Lovers: Best Of Color Inspiration: 130+ Green Color Palettes

http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/08/02/best-of-color-inspiration-130-green-color-palettes/
"Kermit the Frog once said “It ain’t easy being green” but things have changed a little since then. Going Green has never been more popular. We looked at more than 1,000 of the recently created green palettes and pulled out some of our favorites. So, here are more than 130 palettes to help you get your green on."