Weekly Mash Up # 24: Topics in Design, Development, Freelance, Marketing, SEO, Photoshop Tutorials, and Some Inspiration Articles

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This week’s Mash Up is a long one, but all the articles are good ones. We have topics in design, development, freelance, marketing, SEO, social media, website speed testing, photography tutorials, Photoshop tutorials, and some inspiration articles. All of these articles are listed because we think that they will be useful for our readers and some are just too cool not to share.

Design

What’s new for designers – Nov. 2011
"The November edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, frameworks, some JavaScript tools and resources, some great project management tools, and a number of great new fonts.”

Getting The Best Out Of Eclipse For Android Development
"The aim here, then, is to provide a concise overview of Android development tools specifically in Eclipse. If you’ve already started developing for Android, you will almost certainly have come across some of them, but a few might be new to you, especially if you’re learning Android casually or part time. If you’re approaching Android as a Java developer and are already accustomed to Eclipse, you’ll likely grasp this material well."

Wireframing & Prototyping with Adobe Fireworks – Resources and Tutorials
"What this post will offer is a comprehensive starting point and reference for any designer who would like to take those first Fireworks steps and are not very sure were to begin."

Quick Tips On How To Build A Good Website
“Unless your business is fairly large or you have the necessary skills to build a website from scratch by yourself, it is more than likely that you will need some help when setting up a website for business or personal use. Thankfully, there are a number of helpful services available online that can make this task easy for you. I recommend that you make use of an online website builder, is these services generally have the kind of template-based plug ins that inexperienced web designers need.  In addition to online website builders, you will need great content, and appealing design, and a clear marketing strategy in order to create the perfect website for your needs.”

9 great resources for keeping your skills fresh
“With so many blogs, e-books and forums offering knowledge on hundreds of design-related topics, determining quality and choosing sources can quickly become overwhelming and time consuming. Below are 9 of the best resources I have uncovered and used to keep my own skills fresh, chosen for their high content quality, element of interest, value and relevancy.”

30 Days to Learn HTML and CSS: a Free Tuts+ Premium Course
“We set ourselves the challenge of designing the most effective and enjoyable way to learn HTML and CSS in one month. The result is 30 Days to Learn HTML and CSS, a free Tuts+ Premium course instructed by Nettuts+ editor and web dev veteran Jeffrey Way. We’re really excited to share this with you today! (Plus, get a sneak peek at the new Tuts+ Premium.)

Development

Writing Better JavaScript with CoffeeScript: The Basics
“CoffeeScript is a small programming language that compiles into JavaScript. It seeks to make writing JavaScript code better by providing you with a more consistent and succinct syntax, as well as by avoiding the "bad parts" and quirky/irregular nature of the JavaScript language.”

Freelance

Facts About Marketing for Freelance Designers
“In this post we’ll take a look at some facts about marketing for freelance designers. If you’re considering moving into freelancing hopefully this information will help in your preparation. If you’re already freelancing and looking to get more out of your marketing efforts the article should be a help to you as well.”

Marketing / Affiliate Sales

3 Ways To Instantly Double Your Affiliate Sales
"I am going to show you how to instantly double your affiliate sales on your site.

It is going to take some extra work and it won’t be easy, but I guarantee that if you do things this way, you’ll be doing them the right way."

SEO

Beginner Tips to Optimizing Your Site’s Title Tags
"Optimizing your website’s title is one of the most practiced forms of on-page SEO and is an extremely important ranking factor. In this blog post, I am going to go over some fairly simple, beginner tips to properly optimizing your site’s title tag and hopefully, increasing your organic search engine presence and rankings."

Fixating On Rank Can Actually Hurt Your SEO!
“t might seem strange to hear that coming from an SEO professional. Ranking doesn’t matter? What the heck is this guy talking about? Isn’t that the whole point of SEO!? I’m not saying that ranking well isn’t important. There are dozens of reports outlining the percentage of clicks a site is likely to get based on where it falls in the SERP and I can’t argue with the numbers. What I am saying is that site owners shouldn’t become fixated on where their site is ranking because it will cost you the rest of your SEO.”

Social Media

Proof Your That Your Klout Score Doesn’t Define You
"my main issue is Klout not being more transparent on how and what REALLY goes into a person’s Klout Score." Here’s a great article that talks about Klout and its new scoring system for social media. John Paul , the author and owner of the site, ran a test on the scoring system and you might be surprised with the results. In my opinion, Klout scores are not all that important. I try not to check it everyday. Sometimes once a week or less. But it is nice to have a score 50s or higher. Mine was a 62 before the algorithm change, now its a 43.”

10 awesome social sharing plugins for WordPress
“Below are ten great social sharing plugins for your WordPress blog. Most are free and all have sharing options for multiple platforms. Some even include upwards of a hundred or more services you can implement.”

Speed Tests

20 Free Online Tools for Website Speed Testing
“In order to help you build faster websites and identify troublesome website performance bottlenecks, consider incorporating some of the following tools into your web development process.”

Photography

Finding Your Photographic Style – Part 1 of 2
“Finding your style and developing your own voice as a photographer is a journey.

And what an amazing journey it is!  Lets explore two stages we can encounter along the way as we learn to develop our own unique voice.”

Photoshop Tutorials

Surreal Photo Manipulation Tutorial – YTD Exclusive
"With the help of YTD resident graphic artist Geno, we have come up with a step by step photo manipulation tutorial featuring  his latest surrealist inspired artwork. Follow our lead and recreate this cool example of surreal photo manipulation."

Establishing Your Grid In Photoshop
“Creating a grid is typically one of the very first things you do when starting a design comp. After all, it provides the basic structure on which the rest of your design will lie. In this article, we’ll provide two different methods for efficiently establishing a grid. These methods enable you to quickly and smartly form a grid so that you can spend more time designing.”

25 Outstanding Matte Painting Tutorials
“Last week we published a post that showcased beautiful examples of matte paintings for your design inspiration. This week we’d like to follow that up by showcasing some of the best tutorials that will show you more about the process of creating matte paintings so you can try it for yourself. Here you’ll find links to 25 tutorials from various sources. Some of them are laid out step-by-step and others are case studies or more general overviews of the matte painting process.”

Inspiration

21 Examples of Illustration and Hand Drawn Elements in Web Design

"There are a lot of ways to give a website some personality, depth and style, and certainly illustration and hand drawn elements are a good example. From small background elements to complete illustrated websites, from illustrated icons to hand drawn typography, today we will show you some examples of websites using a different approach to spice up their layout. And if you consider that adding illustrated elements can make your page to messy, think twice and check some of the examples we have here. There are a lot of good ways to give your project a nice touch if you use the right amount of illustrative elements, so check out and enjoy."

New Set Of Great Caricatures
"Marco Calcinaro brought us a new set of his great caricatures. Are very well made and has strong details. Marco was born in San Benedetto del Tronto (Italy) in 1971, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan in 1993. His work is his painting, exhibited in galleries across Italy, also working as an illustrator for the publishing and advertising."