web apps

Billings 3 Giveaway Results

PauloGabriel — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:42:46 +0000

2 weeks ago we started a giveaway for a really nice billing application for Macs. It were totally surprised when we got almost 400 people asking for one of those two copies we have avaiable. Well, today you'll get to know whether you won a copy or not.

Billings 3 generates the most professional looking invoices anywhere and we've included 30 templates to choose from. Simply add your logo and contact details and you are ready to invoice out of the box. You can get your first invoice out in 5 minutes.

With Billings 3 you will be able to:

Track time & expenses easily
One click invoicing
Know who owes you instantly
Send statements
Non stop invoicing
iPhone companion (is not currently available, but it's coming soon)
Gorgeous Invoices
Publish to iCal
Tight with Address Book
much more...

For more information visit: http://www.billingsapp.com/

Screenshot

The Winners

And the two really lucky people who got a copy for this handy app are:

It wasn't necessary to have twitter account to win, is just that I found these guys' accounts and linked it. ;)

Well, congratulations, guys! We hope you make good use of it! Cheers! ;)

About the author

Hello, everyone! I'm Paulo Gabriel, designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, born in 1984. I have worked as a webdesigner since 2006, but websites and blogs have been a hobby for me since 1999. Here in Abduzeedo, I try to bring only the hot stuff for you... and hope that all of you enjoy my posts! For more cool stuff, you may also follow me on Twitter.

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Billings 3 Giveaway

abduzeedo — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:34:07 +0000

One of the biggest problems I had when I started my design career more specifically when I started doing freelance work was how to manage that. Unfortunately we do not learn how to take care of business in the design courses in college, at least over here. There are lot's of things to worry about that it might be frightening. That is why it is important to have an app to create reports, logs and of everything you do and how long you take. It the best way to know how much to charge for projects.

Billings 3 is a great software for that. You can track time and then understand how long you take on certain projects, that will definitely make your life much easier when it comes to quote projects and of course send invoices, which, by the way, are gorgeous in Billings 3. Besides, you can design your own invoice as well.

Billings 3 generates the most professional looking invoices anywhere and we've included 30 templates to choose from. Simply add your logo and contact details and you are ready to invoice out of the box. You can get your first invoice out in 5 minutes.

With Billings 3 you will be able to:

Track time & expenses easily
One click invoicing
Know who owes you instantly
Send statements
Non stop invoicing
iPhone companion (is not currently available, but it's coming soon)
Gorgeous Invoices
Publish to iCal
Tight with Address Book
much more...

For more information visit: http://www.billingsapp.com/

We have 2 copies of Billings 3 to give away, just leave a comment to participate. We will announce the winner next week.

Screenshot

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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Sikbox Logo Design Process

abduzeedo — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:59:01 +0000

For the last few weeks I've been working on some projects, but there is one in particular that I think will be really useful for the blog community. It's called Sikbox. Sikbox is a web app that allows you to add a live search to your site, or any site. It uses the Yahoo Boss api and it actually works better than my Drupal default search system.

This project was done pretty quickly. I had the honor to work on the logo and web design with my brother, Eduardo Sasso, the Ninja programmer, and Fabiano, the CSS samurai.

Anyway, in this post I want to share a bit of the ideas and the design process for the logo creation.

Doing the home work

The first thing we did was look for references. We visited lots of sites and also used the very helpful http://patterntap.com/. Below are some of the references we had.

First ideas

The basic idea for the logo was to create a clear association with search. The most common and iconographic symbol for that is the magnifying glass. However we wanted a very subtle element and the first thoughts and sketches we had, tried to avoid that.

For the first designs we tried to use the search box result and the cursor for the symbol as you can see below.

I'm terrible at drawing but they always help ;)

Back to the roots

After some sketches and designs we decided to forget about the other symbols and try to go with the magnifying glass (but again something subtle and discreet). The idea we had was to create the "b" with that element. Also we had to rethink our idea for the best font style, we gave up the idea of a serif font.

Refining the idea.

Our first thought was use shadow to create the 3D effect, but as I always like to do the negative version, the shadows wouldn't work well in that format. We decided to make the effect without the shadow instead.

Final design

Of course the whole process was much longer and painful :) but we think the end result was really cool and, despite the fact that we didn't want the magnifying glass symbol in the very beginning of the process, it ended up a lot better than we had thought.

That's again why I think we have to like the design process otherwise this sort of starting from scratch thing can be very traumatizing, but if you learn to enjoy that everything will flow much better.

Site Design with the logo.

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Mashup your web apps with Ubiquity from Mozilla Labs

Francisco — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:42:20 +0000

Mozilla Labs has a released an awesome new add-on for Firefox that allows you to mash-up web applications. It's incredible! I can't wait to try it out. It's still in the alpha stages so there are kinks that still need to be worked out. But it looks amazing so far. Check out the video for a demonstration.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo

About the author

Hi readers!
I'm a Graphic Designer in New York City (Brooklyn!). NY is a hub for design and my posts will try to focus on, but will not be limited to, design related things happening in NY, such as museum exhibits, architecture, events, local artist interviews, galleries, etc. I'm very much into technology and art and how they intersect to make multimedia art installations. Hope you enjoy my posts!
Check out my blog Distracticon.com
My site: www.franciscog.com
Follow me on Twitter

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Cool Web Image Editor: Sumopaint

PauloGabriel — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:00:21 +0000

We've seen some cool web apps come out this year, like Aviary, and now I've came to know a new one: Sumopaint. It's simpler than Aviary, but you can still make some cool stuff there.

Most of the images in their gallery remind me a lot of the expressionism school, which Van Gogh was part of. I recommend to you all to visit there and play around with it. As our friend Mikko suggested, try out the symmetry tool with the gravity on. I must say, the results are really cool. Cheers!

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Testing Aviary Tools - 4 invitations to give away

abduzeedo — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:18:09 +0000

Last weekend I had a pleasant surprise when I opened my gmail. I've received some invitations to the awesome Aviary tools: Phoenix, the image editor and Peacock the pattern maker.

Aviary is a suite of web-based applications (RIAs) for people who create. From image editing to typography, to music, to 3D and vides, we have a tool for artists of all genres.

I didn't have time to create anything from scratch, I have just played around with some images. However, I’m really impressed with the images I saw. There are some amazing pieces of work on their forums.

Another great feature, perhaps, one of the best features in the Aviary tools is the integration with this online community where you can share projects and open them without saving anything on your machine.

Anyway, below I've listed some really cool designs done using Phoenix. Besides that I have 4 invitations to give away. So just leave a comment and you might get your invitation.

Winners of the invitations

Scarlett
Nathaniel
Designiac
Guilherme Villar
Constantin Potoac

aviary.jpg

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Issuu - Read the world. Publish the world.

PauloGabriel — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:54:42 +0000

Do you wish you could transform those boring .pdf files into cool web-based books or even to find some cool books to look at? Well, I've got just the right tool for you: Issuu.

"Issuu is an online publishing service and a creative community dedicated to publishing. With Issuu (pronounced 'issue') anyone can convert their PDF documents into interactive online publications. It only takes a minute and it's free. Forever." There, you'll find all sorts of books: from architeture to comics. From art to photography. You may visit the site clicking here.

Author: Paulo Antunes | If you want to write an article and have it published here send it via email to abduzeedo[at]abduzeedo.com

issuu04.jpg

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Using VectorMagic

abduzeedo — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 11:46:14 +0000

I found this tool on Digg a couple of days ago but I couldn’t use its service because of the “Digg Effect”. Everybody, that includes me, was trying to convert some bitmaps to vector with a tool called VectorMagic, the online tool for precision vectorization.

VectorMagic is the result of a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda.

Vectorization (aka tracing) is the process of converting a raster image to a vector image.
Raster images are pixel-based, whereas vector images are represented by geometric shapes such as lines, circles and curve

Basically this tool converts bitmaps to vector. However, this might be the best vectorization tool out there, at least that I have used befor. They even created a link showing some comparisons between the VectorMagic, Adobe Live Trace (Illustrator CS2) and Corel PowerTRACE (CorelDRAW X3).

I have converted some images to vectors using it with very good results, specially with logos and some photos. Besides that it's really easy to use, with a distinct and clear user-interface, and the best thing is that it's online and free.

If you need a vectorization tool, VectorMagic is definitely an excellent choice.

vm_s3-example.jpg

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Palette Generator

abduzeedo — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:07:52 +0000

We have a lot of good color resources online, like Colourlovers, however sometimes we need to come up with a custom and unique color palette using an old photo we took or an image found online.

Usually I use Photoshop to do that, applying some adjustments and filters to reduce the number of colors, getting the most visible ones. I tried some palette generators before but none of them caught my interest. But I may change my mind, Big Huge Labs Palette Generator does exactly that, automatically create a color palette from a photo, it's very nice despite the number of adSenses on the page, and it works faster than the others. Besides that it has some other cool features such as interaction with Flickr.

Choose or upload a photo and a palette of colors based on the colors in the photo will be generated automatically. Use it to help with art projects, website design, or even with decorating your home.

It's a very useful tool and definitely worth checking it out.