Creative Community Bulletin 30 April 2009 Through 01 May 2009

These are the arti­cles, blogs, and resources I found inter­est­ing and wor­thy of shar­ing for 30 April 2009 through 01 May 2009:

  • 24 Free Exclusive Vector Icons: ‘Handy’ – ‘Handy’ is a set of 24 free and exclu­sive vec­tor icons that can be used on web­sites, logos and more.

    The icons have a unique hand drawn feel­ing and look great in col­or or black and white. The set also includes most social media web­sites, such as Delicious, Digg and many more.

    These icons are com­plete­ly free for per­son­al and com­mer­cial use and they’re being released exclu­sive­ly to all our RSS subscribers.

  • One Family’s Fight Against Grisly Web Photos | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek​.com – This is a sto­ry about a photo—an image so hor­rif­ic we can’t print it in NEWSWEEK. The pic­ture shows the life­less body of an 18-year-old Orange County girl named Nikki Catsouras, who was killed in a dev­as­tat­ing car crash on Halloween day in 2006. The acci­dent was so grue­some the coro­ner would­n’t allow her par­ents, Christos and Lesli Catsouras, to iden­ti­fy their daugh­ter’s body. But because of two California Highway Patrol offi­cers, a dig­i­tal cam­era and e‑mail users’ easy access to the “Forward” but­ton, there are now nine pho­tos of the acci­dent scene, tak­en just moments after Nikki’s death, cir­cu­lat­ing viral­ly on the Web. In one, her near­ly decap­i­tat­ed head is droop­ing out the shat­tered win­dow of her father’s Porsche.
  • Dear White House…. » Photoshop Insider Blog By Scott Kelby – I heard what they want­ed was a shot of Air Force One (of course, it’s only called Air Force One if the President is actu­al­ly on board, so we’ll just call it “Big Blue and White 747″) fly­ing over the stat­ue of Liberty with Manhattan in the back­ground. There were prob­a­bly more cost effi­cient ways get­ting that image, and so in lit­er­al­ly less than two min­utes I hacked togeth­er the com­pos­ite you see above in Adobe Photoshop CS4, using a back­ground from iStockPhoto​.com and an offi­cial White House shot of “Big Blue and White 747″ from their web site.
  • Freelance Resources: Government rules and reg­u­la­tions – Free PDF – No-Nonsense Guide to Government rules and regulations
    A detailed guide pro­vid­ing an overview of all areas of start­ing a busi­ness (PDF download)

    Published by HMRC con­tents include:

    * Help with rules, reg­u­la­tions and forms
    * Using Business Link to get a head start
    * Health and Safety
    * Intellectual Property
    * Trading regulations
    * Data protection
    * Employing oth­ers and employ­ee rights
    * Getting Government advice and support

  • 101 Creative Publicity Stunts
  • 11 Sites to Make Money Selling Old Gadgets – As tech­nol­o­gy becomes a larg­er part of our lives, we find our­selves cast­ing aside our old gad­gets in favor of new ones. As a result, cell phones, PDAs, and GPS units end up in a junk draw­er. But they don’t have to end up there. Here are 11 sites where you can trade your old – and some­times dead – gad­gets in for actu­al mon­ey, gift cards, and even char­i­ta­ble dona­tions to your favorite causes.
  • 100 WordPress Video Tutorials, from Basic to Advanced : Speckyboy Design Magazine – All of these tuto­ri­als range from basic learn­ing for the begin­ner, to advanced for the expert who wants to learn new tech­niques. Basically every­one can take some­thing from these tuts.
  • How To Successfully Work With People Long Distance — Workflow: Freelance – As a free­lancer and as a web-worker, one of the biggest chal­lenges that I face near­ly every day is that of work­ing with peo­ple who I’ve nev­er met face to face. Although a few clients con­tact me by tele­phone, most pre­fer to deal with me through e‑mail (which is actu­al­ly my pref­er­ence too).

    Since experts say that non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion accounts for well over half of how we inter­act with peo­ple, work­ing through the Internet can some­times seem a bit like play­ing a game of golf blindfolded.

  • Your Social Links On Your Twitter Profile – “Today, I spot­ted a new thing on Twitter’s pro­files: Social links to your oth­er social pro­files like Delicious, Flickr, and so on. I saw it on this per­son­’s pro­file: BILL_ROMANO. Right away, I sent him a tweet ask­ing how he did it.”

    Apparently it’s on new accounts as well. I’ve seen it on accounts set up with­in the last 7 days, with few­er than a dozen fol­low­ers. When will the rest of us get them?

  • Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 impres­sions, insights, and expec­ta­tions (thanks to Bob Levine for the link)