General

Yesterday it was supposedly a normal day: waking up in the morning, having breakfast and going to work. Then in office, everyone gathers around the meeting room as there is important message to inform. And the message is due to unavoidable circumstances, company had no choice but close down. It was so shock and sudden that everyone, including me couldn’t response about it. Yes, now I’m one jobless dude.

As someone might not knowing, NEET means “Not in employment, education, or training”. Actually until now I still can’t believe that this happens to me. It’s a very sad because I really enjoying working in JGG with friendly colleagues. Now everyone has to find new path to continue the life. I have to accept this reality too, and with the time I’m having right now, it’s a great opportunity to think of what to do next. Yes, I’m now available for hire and I shall set up my portfolio page as soon as possible.

Despite the down moment, one thing that still able to continue cheering me up is this blog, my blog. It’s really good to have a personal blog! 😀

There are dozens of sites on the web that offer PSD to HTML slicing services, and it becomes very frustrating to find the right one that will suit you 100%. Designers don’t like to code, but a professional XHTML / CSS is essential for each website. That is why it is sometimes very important to have a reliable coding service you can turn to.

The service that impressed me the most is PSD to HTML by Markup Service. They are professional, fast and secure. They have a personal approach to each client and they are open 24/7.

Delivery time

Markup Service converts PSD to HTML in 8 hours (per first page) and it takes them 3-6 hours to slice each inner page. This is one of the fastest services on the web, and what it more important, that they don’t have a fixed schedule. You can send them the design any time, any day and receive the XHTML / CSS in 8 hours. I don’t think anyone could go faster than that.

Skills

The code you receive after they convert your PSD to XHTML / CSS will be:

• W3C Valid and compliant
• Cross browser compatible (IE 6/7, FF 2/3, Opera 9+, Safari 2/3, Google Chrome)
• SEO Semantic
• Pixel precise
• Optimized for load speed
• Logically structured
• Easy to update
• Self explanatory in terms of class names

Order form

The Order Page of Markup Service is very user friendly and easy to work with. What I really like is the variety of options and packages they offer.

There are three packages – Standard, Professional and Deluxe and the following list of additional options to choose from: flexible width layouts, header/footer stretch, dynamic drop down menus, implementation of rollovers, sIFR implementation and implementation of SSI templates.

You can also choose from two CMS: WordPress or Joomla in case you need more than plain XHTML/CSS.

Prices

The price is based on the number of pages, the package and the additional options you choose. It is automatically calculated on the Order Page. The prices start at $139.

Markup Service offers a 50% discount for inner pages, and an additional 10% discount for bulk orders.

Policies

Markup Service has a very strong NDA policy, so you can be sure that if you outsorce your coding work, it will not appear anywhere on their site, and will not be shared with anyone. They also have a Money Back guarantee so you know that your money is secure with their company.

Examples and Testimonials

You can see some very warm feedbacks about Markup Service on their Testimonials page. Also, there are some examples to look at.

Note: This is a sponsored post.

Hello everyone, is design contest time. Folks over Foldees.com held a Christmas themed comic style greeting card design contest and stand a chance to win up to $2500 worth of cash and prizes! The cards, they can look like comic book covers, be designed as a comic strip, or even just depicting any sorta comic book artwork – be it anime, American, classic… anything goes! And this competition is open to all creative people from all over the world!

You can go to this contest page to find out the prizes, official contest rules as well as download the template AI file. For the sample designs of the card, you can refer to the Foldees blog to get a better picture. Creativity for card design is limitless, just that the output must be in pure flat colour vector art with no rasterization, filters, shadows or transparencies.

I think this is a great competition, and I will send my entry too. So what are you waiting for, just start design your card and send it in here before 20 October 2008! 😀

About Foldees

Started in 2008, Foldees was created to showcase the coolest greeting cards in the world. Where do these cards come from? You!

We believe that the coolest greeting cards in the world won’t come from a horde of creative directors in a fluorescent lit cubicle farm, but from the homes and cafes of the world, sorta like this guy….

We believe that everyone has at least one good idea or two, and that the office is just about the worst place to gestate those ideas (unless you’re doing it on the sly while your boss is out).

We believe that good creativity should be encouraged, and that’s why we pay our due credit, and royalties to the designers at each and every opportunity.

We believe that nothing says you care about someone like a greeting card that’s relevant to that someone, and that’s why we’ve created a site where people just like you are creating cards of all sorts, all over the world.

Few days back I came across this interesting flash game call Light Bot. In this game, you will use a sets of key actions and functions to “program” the robot character to the blue squares and light them up. Soon I played the first few levels, immediately got addicted to it. The levels are getting more and more difficult and challenging until the end and I actually manage to pass them all! So, I think like a programmer?

Well, actually I do like to think and I like puzzle games very much. Games like Light Bot or Portal is my personal favorite types of games because I like to solve problems. The more difficult the more I like it. When successfully pass a level, I will be very happy for it. The process of problem solving is very exciting and sometimes tough too, but it’s a enjoyable process overall. Just like when designing things, it has the similar process, to think of what kind of design that provide best solution, and normally it takes several tries to achieve.

Everyone can think like a programmer, just that you have to think what works best to pass the level and never give up! But well, it’s just a game anyway, please enjoy! 😀

Last month, Smashing Magazine held an interesting competition about designing creative horizontal rules. I participated the competition and hopefully to be shortlisted or at least be part of this special event. Recently the contest was revealed and I’m very eager to find whether my entry was in or not. It was a long post with tonnes of refreshing horizontal graphics submitted by many other designers… but.. when scrolling down the page, I can’t find my work. My entry was dropped!

Well I felt quite sad and disappointed, because I’m quite confident with my design.. But nevermind, I will share with you here. Below is my design which consists of 5 pieces of graphics. My concept is the normal horizontal rule is just a horizontal line separator, why not having a sequence showing small little story? Basically this is the idea.

Above are the horizontal sequence. Although I think the design it’s not quite practical but because of the competition, I want design come out with something unique. Ahh, just plain unlucky. 😉

Well recently the hottest news that floated around the Internet world, without a doubt is Google launching their own web browser call Google Chrome. Without left behind, I myself also downloaded a copy, installed it and have a try on this sweet browser. Wow, it is fast!

I really enjoy using Google Chrome because it was lightweight, does not consume a lot of background resources, and the response is quick. I really love it despite it is still just a beta released browser. Just one thing that I’m not getting used to it is that the “Stop Loading” button was located at the far right side of the address bar. This is because normally the default “Stop Loading” button was located at the left side of browser, beside refresh button.

I think the future version of Chrome will have more useful features to look more complete and well rounded like FireFox. FireFox is still my main web browser to use, but it seems to be slower and eating more RAM resources. Maybe it is because of all the add-ons I installed that cause this. But I just hope it can be quicker like Chrome.

Although Google Chrome is new but I think it has huge potential to cruise forward, competing against the modern browser war.

In January this year, I posted up Dotted World Map vector resource for download, and it became very popular! It has being featured and introduced in many popular sites like Vecteezy, WebAppers, Smashing Magazines, Spoon Graphics, etc.. and even went to the front page of Delicious. Well, now it also appeared as printed format in Hyphen Magazine! 😀

Don’t you think it looks good on the spread shown above? Hyphen is a national magazine for urban, in-the-know Asian Americans. Covering arts, culture and politics with substance, style and sass, Hyphen has become a media must for one of the fastest growing populations in America. Plus, Hyphen is a nonprofit mag with an all-volunteer staff that does it all for the love. You can support them by subscribing the magazine too.

LayoutsPack.com is a membership-based web templates provider. Their collection counts up to 250 templates currently (among them Flash, Flash Animated, CSS and HTML templates) and with a minimum membership fee of $49.95 you get access to all of them without limit (during 3 months). This is the first package. The other two are $59.95 for 6 months & $89.95 for 1 year. From $49.95 to $89.95 for 250 website templates is a very modest fee. This is the first part of their unique selling proposition (USP).

Overall, there are 45 categories of web and flash templates at LayoutsPack. The advanced search form and search by tags are unique helpful tools in the process of finding a necessary template. This is the second part of their USP.

Since the only available service from this site is a membership, the collection of templates is not going to decrease, but only to increase. So you don’t have to worry that you may lose something. All the web templates are available and accessible for all the members equally.

As for the quality of the website templates it is very high-grade. The layouts design is very challenging and catchy, bright and vivid. It seems like their web masters have done a great job composing these website templates.

Although the project has just been recently launched some grateful clients have already left their very complimentary testimonials. All of them have been left by web design studios or free-lance web designers – target customers for LayoutsPack.

Note: This is a sponsored review

Hi everyone, I’m gladly to inform everyone that there is a contest to create the best slogan for Templates.com this month. The idea of the contest is simple. Everyone is welcome to think up the slogan, then leave a message in comments to the Templates.com blog post here, and stand to win $100 in cash or credits from Templates.com.

The contest starts on July 15th 2008, and the results will be announced at the beginning of August. Each participant of this contest who has an account on Templates.com will get 4 credits, so everyone will win!

The top prizes are:

• 1st place: $100 in cash
• 2nd place: 100 credits from Templates.com which can be used to purchase our products
• 3rd place: 50 credits from Templates.com which can be used to purchase our products

About Templates.com

Templates.com creates 3D Models, Clip Art, Illustrations, Icons, and Web Templates. They love what they are doing, so it would be great to involve the customers, friends and guests who no doubt are creative people into the process of slogan creation.

So good luck everyone and be creative and have fun! 😀

Today I want to announce a special event. TemplateMonster.com is going to hold a 4th of July lottery with give-away to any participant. This promo will start on the 26th of June and the lottery will be held up until the 9th of July. And below are the details of TemplateMonster Lottery which reminds elections in its structure.

Two TemplateMonter’s website designs will be exposed for the elections which you can see both of them here. In order to take part in the lottery one should vote for one design or the other. The design which gets the most votes becomes the winner. Note the best design is chosen during two weeks period. What you should do is just fill in your name and email address, vote for your favorite candidate and press the VOTE! button! It’s just that simple.

And here are the benefits for users to take part in their lottery: Everyone who participates in the lottery gets the free Patriotic Icon Set. All icons included into this free Icon Set also relate to patriotic theme and 4th of July topic. Besides that everyone who participates in 4th of July lottery has a chance to get one of the special prizes.

The special prizes are:

• 1 Gift Certificate giving the opportunity to get any product from Template Monster database for free;
• Two 80% discount coupons for purchasing any product from Template Monster database;
• Three 50% discount coupons for purchasing any product from Template Monster database.

So, basically this is the idea of the promotion. Sounds good isn’t it? Be sure to stop by the promotion page and vote for your favorite candidate and get free icons, plus stand a chance to win the lottery price. By the way, everyone who purchases any product from Template Monster during this promo will get the Icon Set that mentioned above for free too. In addition to that there will also be a 20% discount for the Patriotic Templates product category at Template Monster.