We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 75+ Excellent Collection of Tutorials, Inspirations And Resources For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of July which our readers/viewers may like.  Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.

Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial
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145 Ultimate Round-Up Of Photoshop Tutorials and Resources

35 Unbelievable Smoke-Themed Designs and Tutorials

Web Design Tutorials: The Ultimate Roundup

40+ Vector Characters Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials

Three Short Tutorials for Photographers and Photography Lovers

Creative Photoshop Animal King Photo Manipulation Tutorial

Tips & Tutorials for Creating Custom Designer Toys

Creating an Abstract Watercolor Wallpaper 

22 Very Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

Design a travel PSD layout with Adobe Photoshop

52 Excellent Cinema 4D Tutorials

50+ Ultimate Collection of Glow and Light Effect Tutorials in Photoshop

How to Quickly and Effectively Clean Out Body Hair in Photoshop

24 Amazing Photoshop Tutorials

Design an E-Commerce Website in Photoshop

How to Create a Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene

20 Amazing Adobe Illustrator Tutorials for Creating Icon

70+ incredible HDR images with photoshop and photomatrix tutorials

How To Create a Retro Apple Wallpaper in Photoshop

26 Professional Photoshop Retouching Tutorials

Mastering Illustrator Effects

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 Tutorial Videos

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration
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40 beautiful and creative typography designs to inspire

25 Large Photo Background Websites

23 Inspiring And Colorful Examples Of Digital Art And Manipulations

110 Fresh Logo Designs For Design Inspiration

27 Inspirational Horizontal Scrolling Websites

100 Artworks from the Top 20 Digital Artists in South America

22 Eye Catching Colourful Logos

20 Inspirational, Clean E-Commerce Website Designs

Business Card Design: 100+ Creative Examples, Useful Tutorials and Templates 

44 Advertising Posters with Clever Ideas 

30 Awesome and Well Designed Mac App Websites

30 Awesome Twitter Inspired Logo Designs

Animating Design Elements: 7 Unique & Creative Practices

21 Popular Brands That Are Using WordPress

Before & After: Alex Justino Photo Manipulation

25 Inspiring Examples of Sign-Up Pages

30 Wonderful Examples of Shoes Advertisements

70 Typographic, Clean And Minimalist Color Scheme Web Designs

15 Cute Cartoon Wallpapers

55 Fresh Examples Of Corporate Website Designs

25 Beautiful Examples Of Typography Portraits

50 Fresh Portfolio Websites for Your Inspiration

20 Incredible Sunrise Wallpapers Caught in Space

55 Niche Web Design Galleries for Your Inspiration

33 Inspirational Illustrations

Javascript and Ajax

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25+ Create Amazing Image Effects with Some of the Best jQuery Plugins Available

25 Fresh and New jQuery Plugins and Tutorials

Making a Content Slider with jQuery UI

MooTools Tutorials and Resources Round-Up

15+ Plugins to Unleash the Invincible Power of jQuery and WordPress

Most Useful Ajax Tools And Tutorials

15 Website for jQuery Enthusiast and Addicts

xHTML and CSS
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Mega CSS Resource Roundup

20+ Resources and Tutorials for Creative Forms using CSS

50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design

Resources
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21 Absolutely Useful And Inspiring Collection Of Most Desirable Freebies

35 High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs

30 Awesome Textures for Creating Subtle Grunge Designs

10 Great Free Adobe Air Apps that Every Designer and Developer Should Use

19 Free Photo Source Sites for CG Artists

45+ Absolutely Useful Free Fabric Textures

60+ Free Fonts for Big, Bold and Beautiful Headlines

15 Essential WordPress Plugins for Portfolio Sites

5 Awesome Online Photo Editors

27 Color Tools and Resource for Choosing the Right Color Palette 

28 Best Quality Textured Backgrounds Free WordPress Themes

40 Free and Useful GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers

Miscellaneous Articles
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13 Ways to Browser Test and Validate Your Work

Best free PHP learning resources for beginners

The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer

13 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes

45+ Useful Resources For Better Torrenting Experience 

Ultimate Ecommerce Starter Kits for Wordpress Users

30 Handy Cheat Sheets and Reference Guides for Web Professionals

WordPress Resources – 48 Resources, Tips, Tricks & Themes

Brought To You By

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Posted by great scott!

Dr. Pete Meyers of UserEffect drops by the studio this week to teach us some incredibly valuable tactics for e-commerce site architecture.

E-commerce folks know that once you get up to thousands (or even millions) of products, it can be difficult to make sure the bulk of your juice goes to your most profitable products, while still getting long-tail traffic for the rest of your inventory. Pete shares some great tricks for large-site architecture that will help you focus your traffic and rankings on your top items, while maintaining visibility for your whole catalog.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Architecture for Commerce with Dr. Pete from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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Posted by jennita

Ok, so you’ve all read about The Best Spam Submission Ever which was illustrated ever so eloquently (and if you haven’t read it, please read it now… uhm well ok after you read this – it’s awesomely funny!). As the post mentions, we sift through many YOUmoz entries every day determining which ones to post to the site. Most spam is easily detected; such as the body of the post only consists of 1 or 2 sentences, or the title is obviously nothing related to online marketing (buy gold and silver online!). However every now and then, there is a spark of spam brilliance that makes its way through.

The other day I ran across this entry that had an odd title, but it actually seemed to have real potential. I opened the entry and at first glance, I thought "YAY! I have a good contender." There were multiple paragraphs, headings and even bullet points… this had to be legit, right? Not so much. I found myself reading the entire entry because I was so dumbfounded by the sheer brilliance of the whole thing. If this person had posted to a blog that automatically checks for spam entries, and auto-posts, this one probably would have made it through.

So the idea is quite simple. Take an excerpt of a book (or anything written I suppose), and add keyword rich links throughout! Essentially, make the post look as authentic as possible, without having to spend time writing a blog post. I’ve taken the idea and put together an example for you below. It’s not perfect, but it is damn simple!

<!– Begin Example Spam Post –>

---

Her name is Esther; she is a war correspondent who has just returned from Iraq because of the imminent invasion of that country; she is thirty years old, married, without children. He is an unidentified male, between twenty-three and twenty-five years old, with dark, Mongolian features. The two were last seen in a café on the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. He was reading: Buy Gold jewelry and diamonds direct.

Just the beginning

The police were told that they had met before, although no one knew how often: Esther had always said that the man — who concealed his true identity behind the name Mikhail — was someone very important, although she had never explained whether he was important for her career as a journalist or for her as a woman.

The police began a formal investigation. Various theories were put forward — kidnapping, blackmail, a kidnapping that had ended in murder — none of which were beyond the bounds of possibility given that, in her search for information, her work brought her into frequent contact with people who had links with terrorist cells. They discovered that, women love gold necklaces and jewelry in the weeks prior to her disappearance, regular sums of money had been withdrawn from her bank account: those in charge of the investigation felt that these could have been payments made for information. She had taken no change of clothes with her, but, oddly enough, her passport was nowhere to be found.

• He is a stranger, very young, with no police record, with no clue as to his identity.
• She is Esther, thirty years old, the winner of two international prizes for journalism, and married.
• My wife.

Next steps

I immediately come under suspicion and am detained because I refuse to say where I was on the day she disappeared. However, a prison officer has just opened the door of my cell, saying that I’m a free man. A man who reads Silver and Gold Jewelry.

And why am I a free man? Because nowadays, everyone knows everything about everyone; you just have to ask and the information is there: where you’ve used your credit card, where you spend your time, whom you’ve slept with. In my case, it was even easier: a woman, another journalist, a friend of my wife, and divorced — which is why she doesn’t mind revealing that she slept with me — came forward as a witness in my favor when she heard that I had been detained. She provided concrete proof that I was with her and with gold necklaces on the day and the night of Esther’s disappearance.

I talk to the chief inspector, who returns my belongings and offers his apologies, adding that my rapid detention was entirely within the law, and that I have no grounds on which to accuse or sue the state. I say that I haven’t the slightest intention of doing either of those things, that I am perfectly aware that we are all under constant suspicion and under twenty-four-hour surveillance, even when we have committed no crime.

"You’re free to go," he says, echoing the words of the prison officer.

Conclusion

I ask: Isn’t it possible that something buy gold direct and diamonds really has happened to my wife? She had said to me once that — understandably given her vast network of contacts in the terrorist underworld — she occasionally got the feeling she was being followed.

• The inspector changes the subject. I insist, but he says nothing.
• I ask if she would be able to travel on her passport, and he says, of course, since she has committed no crime. Why shouldn’t she leave and enter the country freely?
• "So she may no longer be in France?"
• "Do you think she left you because of that woman you’ve been sleeping with?"
• That’s none of your business, I reply.

---

<!– End Example Spam Post –>

Creative! Right? But, just think about this… if these spammers took a few minutes to actually think through and write a relevant post, they would have not only received exposure but they would have some SWEET links from SEOmoz as well. Plus, if the post is well-written and is quickly getting popular (thumbs up), you may even get promoted to the main blog… talk about exposure! I encourage you all to submit well thought out, relevant posts to YOUmoz. Submit entries you will be proud of showing to the rest of the community, and make sure the content is unique.

Every day we receive many spam entries for YOUmoz, which slows down the process of publishing the real, legitimate ones. This is a reminder for all our spammers out there: Real people read and publish these posts! You can stop spamming us, because at least for now, we’re smarter than you are. With that, I’d love to hear some of your best spam submissions!

---

PS. This is my own made up spam example and was not taking from any of the actual spam we’ve received.

I used an excerpt from Paulo Coelho’s "The Zahir" and if you have never read his work, I highly recommend him.

Spam photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barmala/ / CC BY 2.0

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For me, Sony has always been the antithesis of open source. So this comes as something of a shock:

Sony Pictures Imageworks, the award-winning visual effects and digital character animation unit of Sony Pictures Digital Productions, is launching an open source development program, it was announced today by Imageworks’ chief technology officer, Rob Bredow. Five technologies will be released initially:

* OSL, a programmable shading language for rendering
* Field3d, a voxel data storage library
* Maya Reticule, a Maya Plug-in for camera masking
* Scala Migration, a database migration tool
* Pystring, python-like string handling in C++

Imageworks’ production environment, which is known for its photo-real visual effects, digital character performances, and innovative technologies to facilitate their creation, has incorporated open source solutions, most notably the Linux operating system, for many years. Now the company is contributing back to the open source community by making these technologies available. The software can be used freely around the world by both large and small studios. Each project has a team of passionate individuals supporting it who are interested in seeing the code widely used. The intention of the open source release is to build larger communities to adopt and further refine the code.

OK, so it’s only a tiny, non-mainstream bit of Sony, but it’s surely a sign of the times….

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter @glynmoody and identi.ca.

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Wow, here’s a really great article about identity management from, um, er, Microsoft. Actually, it’s a rather remarkable Microsoft article, since it contains the following sentences:

On February 14, 2006, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates declared that passwords would be gone where the dinosaurs rest in three to four years.

But as I write this in March 2009, it is pretty clear that Bill was wrong.

But it’s not for that frisson that you should read it; it’s for the following insight, which really needs hammering home:

The big challenge with respect to identity is not in designing an identity system that can provide SSO [Single Sign On], even though that is where most of the technical effort is going. It’s not even in making the solution smoothly functioning and usable, where, unfortunately, less effort is going. The challenge is that users today have many identities. As I mentioned above, I have well over 100. On a daily basis, I use at least 20 or 25 of those. Perhaps users have too many identities, but I would not consider that a foregone conclusion.

The purist would now say that “SSO can fix that problem.” However, I don’t think it is a problem. At least it is not the big problem. I like having many identities. Having many identities means I can rest assured that the various services I use cannot correlate my information. I do not have to give my e-mail provider my stock broker identity, nor do I have to give my credit card company the identity I use at my favorite online shopping site. And only I know the identity I use for the photo sharing site. Having multiple identities allows me to keep my life, and my privacy, compartmentalized.

Yes yes yes yes yes. *This* is what the UK government simply does not want to accept: creating a single, all-powerful “proof” of identity is actually exactly the wrong thing to do. Once compromised, it is hugely dangerous. Moreover, it gives too much power to the provider of that infrastructure – which is precisely why the government *loves* it. (Via Ideal Government.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter @glynmoody and identi.ca.

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