Best Global Brands: How valuable is green?

brandchannel.com : "Of the 100 Best Global Brands ranked by BusinessWeek and Interbrand, Toyota at Number 6 has among the most highly visible, seemingly committed approach to environmental issues. But does any of this impact brand value?"



Can big business go green when skeptical consumers have become extremely cynical? In the end, it sounds like it will be part conscience, part brand value, and part bottom line.

Box.net Releases Microsoft & Adobe Plug-ins

mashable.com: "Box.net, the file-sharing application, has launched a few more plug-ins due to the success of its plug-in developed for Microsoft Office.

There are now box.net plug-ins available for Open Office, Photoshop, Acrobat and 3ds max. These plug-ins allow you to back up files and share directly from each application."

Box is doing a great job at extending their service beyond the website only model. The widget they offer is very useful, now tying specific apps directly to online storage will be super handy as well (although they appear to be Windows only). I'd love to see them create an S3 option for their service as well, where they become the interface between you and (ie cheap) S3 storage.

The 12 Master Ad Formats (Video)

Alexa Launches Official "Sparky" Firefox Toolbar

Alexa - Alexa Toolbar: "Sparky is a free FireFox browser plugin that accompanies you as you surf, providing useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing."



There have been a number of unofficial toolbars, but here's the real deal for those who like to reference Alexa data when reviewing websites.

Google Announces Hosted site search for businesses

Official Google Blog:: "Today we've released Custom Search Business Edition (CSBE) to do just that. CSBE is a hosted site search solution that provides Google-quality results for your website. It's fast, relevant, reliable, and flexible, so that users can quickly find what they're looking for through search results customized and integrated into your business website.

CSBE builds on the Google Custom Search Engine, a hosted search solution we introduced last October that allows organizations to create a search engine and search results that are tailored to their point of view... Businesses that want further control over results presentation and integration with their website can obtain results through XML. Now those of you with business sites have the option to turn off ads and have further control over branding. In addition, CSBE provides options for email and phone support. The pricing starts at $100 per year for searching up to 5,000 pages."

Finally Google is offering a 'private label' search service, and seems affordable too. Now I feel bad for folks like Picosearch.

Icon Design: Anti-Aliasing

This is a great how-to article covering the process for tweaking vector art in pixel-preview mode so that the 16x16 versions of the icons do not suffer in quality compared to the larger sizes you may be targeting.

FlickrShop plug-in uploads Photoshop images to Flickr

PixelNovel: "FlickrShop is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to upload images to Flickr photo sharing website directly from Adobe Photoshop. No need to save your image to a temporary file, no more switching between applications - just open your image, tweak it in Photoshop and share it with the world via Flickr!"

This is a handy addition to your arsenal of Flickr tools.

rss2twitter.com - Dead simple solution for adding a feed to twitter

rss2twitter.com: "With RSS 2 Twitter any RSS feed can now be twittered. Want to subscribe to any blog and have it go to your phone? Easy - Just setup a twitter account, log in here with that username and password and then add some feeds and that account will twitter away to the tune of your feed."

Just login with your twitter account, add your RSS feeds, and there you go.

Coworkers.com Launches New Profile Badge Feature

"By simply inserting a couple lines into your HTML source, you can quickly display one our "badges" wherever your like... you can even show your Coworkers rating inside any web page! Each badge links directly to your public Coworkers.com profile page. Just go to our "Tools" page, login, and get your code."

This is a nice new way to share your profile information. Some of the badges even show live rating statistics, both overall and detailed.

'Tuna Pitch' - Free guitar tuner OS X App and Widget Released

Freeverse: "Freeverse and Felt Tip Software today announced 'Tuna Pitch' a free app and widget to help you tune your guitar or other instrument. With five built-in presets including the standard EADGBE tuning, reference tones, and the option to set all six strings to any note, Tuna Pitch has everything you need to stay in-tune! The Tuna Pitch app features a high-contrast, expandable window so it's easy to read, while the widget version is small and wont clutter your Dashboard. Both the app and widget are 100% free"

Very cool little app and widget combo. It also uses the built in mic or audio input so you can tune your instrument that way too. And hey the application name is even pronounced with a Boston accent.

Feedburner Comes to Blogger: Google Analytics Next?

mashable.com: "It was inevitable really: Feedburner’s new owner Google has gone ahead and integrated the feed tracking service into its Blogspot/Blogger.com blog platform, enabling one click redirection of Blogger feeds to Feedburner.

In other words: if you want detailed stats on who is reading your Blogger blog, it’s now easy to do. The integration also works with blogger blogs not hosted on the Blogspot domain. Feedburner’s instructions: “log into your Blogger account, select Settings | Site Feed, enter your FeedBurner feed address and click “Save Settings.”"

Project Seven Announces CSS Layout Magic

PVII CSS Layout Magic: "Whether you are a CSS novice or a seasoned pro, CSS Layout Magic is an indispensible addition to your developer toolkit — instantly providing you with a rock-solid and standards-based foundation for your CSS-based projects and allowing you to focus more energy on your site's content and style than on its underlying structure."

Interested in how this compares to the template selection built into Dreamweaver...

Streamy - The Digg Killer?

via digg: "Streamy is one part Pageflakes + one part Digg. Users get their home page which is divided into topical sections but then via the wisdom of the Streamy crowds you get personalized recommendations on other stories and publications." Go to the site to request an invite to the BETA, or check out the video overview below.


read more | digg story

Coworkers.com Summer 2007 iPod Giveaway

J.Y. Design client Coworkers.com is giving away an iPod Nano (8 GB). The promotion ends on September 30th, so go check it out now. The promotion requires that you register on the site for FREE. It's a startup site, with a growing community so odds are pretty high in your favor: Enter at Coworkers.com now

iPhoney - an iPhone simulator for designers

Marketcircle: iPhoney: "Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone? Look no further. iPhoney gives you a pixel-accurate web browsing environment powered by Safari that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. It's the perfect 320 by 480-pixel canvas for your iPhone development. And it's free."



This is very handy for those that may not be in the market for an iPhone strictly for testing purposes. Also, you can actually use new specialized sites like the Digg iPhone Beta.

Linotype FontExplorer X Now Supports CS3

Linotype FontExplorer X for Mac has been updated to include some nice features: Added information “Import date”; Adobe InDesign/Illustrator CS3 Plug-Ins; New detailed preview in the information window; Option to search fonts by vendor; Sorting by label; and more.

Of course most importantly is CS3 support. This is a great font management app, and it's free.

Mossberg: Apple working on Adobe Flash support for iPhone

An impending software update to Apple's iPhone will include a plug-in for the handset's Safari web browser that will finally enable users view Adobe Flash media files, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg reports.

read more | digg story