OctoGFX

10 Frequently Updated Tech Websites

octogfx — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:16:06 +0000

Being a geek just doesn’t mean wearing freakishly high pants, overalls, and glasses. It also means that you know everything (and anything) about the tech world. As soon as a new tech gadget comes out, it is our duty (as geeks) to know about it, and you can’t possibly call yourself a geek if you are not up to date with all that stuff. There’s nothing that I don’t know about the latest geek gadgets. Why? Because I’m a geek, and I’m proud! I visit a couple of these 10 tech websites daily to get my dose of geeky news, and I suggest that you start doing the same. You’re welcome, fellow geeks. ;]
Full list after jump

1. Engadget.com

2. Gizmodo.com

3. PCMag.com

4. T3.com

5. CNET.com

6. Wired.com

7. TechCrunch.com

8. news.Yahoo.com/technology

9. TiPb.com

10. AndroidCentral.com

30 Creative Movie Posters

octogfx — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:16:34 +0000

I love movies just as much as the next guy, but to me, the movie is nothing without the movie poster. The movie poster is what sells the movie. I look at a movie poster, and I see the movie. I know, you are not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, but it is very hard not to. If the movie poster is poorly made, then that yells “low budget” to me, and it means that the movie is low budget, which most probably means that it isn’t very good. And if the movie poster is really well made, and is pleasing to the eye, it attracts more people. And sure, this might just be my opinion, but after looking through this list of “30 Creative Movie Posters”, try to not be tempted into watching a couple of these movies. I bet you that you won’t be able to resist. ;]
Full list after jump

1. Terminator: Salvation

2. The Ugly Truth

3. Blindness

4. The Book Of Eli

5. Iron Man 2

6. Avatar: The Last Airbender

7. Stripped Down

8. Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

9. Labor Pains

10. Extract

11. The Dark Knight

12. Man On Wire

13. Crank: High Voltage

14. Zombieland

15. Jennifer’s Body

16. Blue Gold: World Water Wars

17. The Eye

18. The Memory Thief

19. Taxi To The Dark Side

20. Legion

21. Shutter Island

22. The Broken

23. The Final Destination

24. Max Payne

25. Lord Of War

26. Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer

27. A Christmas Carol

28. (500) Days Of Summer

29. From Paris With Love

30. Lake Mungo

45 Creative Album Covers

octogfx — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:19:32 +0000

Ironically enough, this post was inspired by one of our own “Inspiration Of The Day” posts. Yesterday, while I was looking for a good inspirational image, I found an album cover for a band named Three Days Grace, and that not only led to “Inspiration Of The Day #70″, but it also led to the creation of this post. While making “Inspiration Of The Day #70″ I thought to make a whole post just on good album covers, and here we are now. Album covers have existed for centuries. And regardless of the fact that you should not judge a book by it’s cover, music is still judged by how the album cover looks. I don’t know about you, but I would never buy a CD with a horrible cover (if I had never heard the music before). The simple fact is that a good image sells, and having a good looking album cover is part of keeping that good image. And who is responsible for making these good looking album covers? Us, the graphic designers. So I thought I would do you guys a favor and compile this post of “45 Creative Album Covers” for inspiration the next time you decide to design an album cover.
Full list after jump

1. Three Days Grace – Life Starts Now

2. Three Days Grace – One X

3. The Fray – You Found Me

4. The Fray – How To Save A Life

5. Good Charlotte – Good Morning Revival.

6. Fort Minor – The Rising Tied

7. Four Year Strong – Rise Or Die Trying

8. The Academy Is… – Fast Times At Barrington High

9. The Airborne Toxic Event – The Airborne Toxic Event

10. All Time Low – So Wrong, Its Right

11. All Time Low – Put Up Or Shut Up

12. Angels & Airwaves – Love

13. Chiodos – All’s Well That Ends Well

14. Coldplay – Viva La Vida

15. A Day To Remember – Homesick

16. Death Cab For Cutie – Transatlanticism

17. Jay Z – The Blueprint 3

18. John Legend – Evolver

19. Kanye West – Graduation

20. Kanye West – 808s And Heartbreak

21. Keane – Spiraling

22. Keane – A Bad Dream

23. Keane – Under The Iron Sea

24. Keane – Hopes And Fears

25. Kid Kudi -Man On The Moon

26. Kings Of Leon – Only By The Night

27. Kings Of Leon – Because Of The Times

28. Linkin Park – Meteora

29. Linkin Park – Minutes To Midnight

30. Sleeping With Sirens – With Ears To See And Eyes To Hear

31. Lydia – Illuminate

32. Madina Lake – From Them, Through Us, To You

33. The Maine – Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

34. Mayday Parade – A Lesson In Romantics

35. Mayday Parade – Anywhere But Here

36. Metro Station – Metro Station

37. My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade

38. My Chemical Romance – Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge

39. Panic At The Disco – New Perspective

40. Paramore – Riot!

41. The Secret Handshake – One Full Year

42. Silverstein – Shipwreck In The Sand

43. Silversun Pickups – Carnavas

44. Silversun Pickups – Pikul

45. Story Of The Year – Page Avenue

20 Iron Man Wallpapers

octogfx — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:15:36 +0000

It’s that time again! The time when a geeky movie comes out and all of us at OctoGFX.com get really excited over it. The last time we got really excited over a geeky movie, it led to a new post on Harry Potter Wallpapers. And now we are really excited about the newly released Iron Man 2. So you know what that means?! Iron Man Wallpapers!
Full list after jump.

Click on the pictures to open up the bigger images that you can save to your desktop.

The Big Three of WordPress Hosting

octogfx — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:47:23 +0000

WordPress is one of the best platforms for running a blog, a personal site, a corporate site, or in fact any type of site. WordPress is free, powerful and easy to install. You can install WordPress on almost any hosting plan but if you want to get the most out of it and if you value security dearly, then any web host is not the answer. WordPress is secure but when you run it on a web host where security is unheard of,this compromises your site and you can expect trouble.

The fact that many web hosts offer WordPress hosting doesn’t mean that all these web hosts are equal. If you take the time to browse through web hosting guides, you will see that particular WordPress hosts are usually listed as the best choices, while others are not recommended at all.

WordPress Hosting Rankings

When there are so many WordPress hosts, it gets difficult to choose the best among them. Actually, there is hardly a single best WordPress host. It is more precise to say that there are 5 or 10 great WordPress hosts, tens of more or less good hosts and tens of WordPress hosts you’d better stay away from.

Many influential web hosting guide sites, for instance Web Hosting Search, regularly publish rankings of web hosts, including WordPress hosts, thus making it easier to pick a WordPress host that is really outstanding. The rankings are most useful, if they are recent because web hosting is a dynamic industry and things change fast.

The idea to rank WordPress hosts is certainly not original. Many sports, such as basketball, or football, or tennis make such rankings. Well, with sports it is more or less easier because you have scores and you just sort the players according to their scores. With web hosting it is isn’t that easy to rank WordPress hosts but still since there are factors and features that matter more than others when looking for the best web host, it is possible to rank hosts according to these criterias.

The Big Three According to Web Hosting Search

Web Hosting Search is one of the most reputable sites where you can find wordpress hosting guides. Web Hosting Search monitors what is going on in the web hosting industry and knows which web hosts are good at any given moment and which aren’t. According to Web Hosting Search, the three best WordPress hosts at the moment are:

Arvixe is a top choice for almost any kind of web hosting and WordPress hosting is not an exception. Its 99.9% uptime might be industry-standard but actually many hosts fail to meet it. Arvixe’s fees are more than affordable and if you have a couple of sites and blogs to host, then it is really, really cheap. Read the Arvixe review.

Just host is also among the best web hosts for any kind of hosting and its WordPress hosting is also very reliable. Similarly to many other web hosts, Just Host offers unlimited storage space and monthly transfers but unlike many other web hosts, this is not at the expense of quality. Read the Just Host review.

1&1 is very popular in Europe and its service is top-notch. In addition to WordPress hosting, they offer many other services, so if you need a web host that will meet all your hosting needs, 1&1 is a good idea. Read the 1&1 review.

These three big WordPress hosts are chosen for a reason. They provide quality, reasonable fees and top support. If you sign up with any of these, you will hardly regret it. Web Hosting Search keeps an eye on many web hosts and the fact that these three have been picked as the Big Three WordPress hosts, means that they deliver more than the average host.

Author:

Laura Hayes is a full time Senior Writer for Web Hosting Search, one of the strongest guides for web hosting. She writes on the topic of WordPress tutorials and online marketing.

A Quick Look At Adobe CS5

octogfx — Sun, 02 May 2010 03:30:06 +0000

As most of you guys already know, Adobe CS5 recently came out! This might not be interesting news for some of you guys, but for the rest of us, our mouth’s are watering just thinking about it. And, at this point, my mouth is flooded! Adobe did a good job of adding a lot of new features to CS5 Master Collection. We still have the same programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc, but there are tons of new features in the CS5 versions. In this post I will be covering some of the premier features of my favorite Adobe programs. Adobe also did a good job of quickly review the premier features of the most important programs in their preview/show off video, so you can give that a look if you want by scrolling to the bottom of this post. Oh, and one last thing before we get started… Make sure to have a bucket ready to salivate in, because this is about to blow your mind!

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5:
Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 concentrates on getting more things done easily through the design process, rather than having to set stuff up manually through masses of code.

To get us started this video quickly wraps up most of the new features of Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.

A big thing that Adobe added to Dreamweaver CS5 is integrated CMS support. They made sure you know about this by showing it off in the Dreamweaver section of their website. Integrated CMS support is basically a fancy word for saying Dreamweaver CS5 now gives you the ability to easily make websites/themes for content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal. This is a must have tool for graphic designers at this point in time where custom themes for WordPress, Drupal, etc. are highly demanded. Graphic designers can finally design a good WordPress theme without having to go through the hassle of coding dozens of pages in .php.

Click on the link below then press the play button before “Integrated CMS Support” to watch the demo video (made by Adobe) of this feature:
http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/whatsnew/?configListID=0
Also, using that link, you can take a look at some of the other (less important) new features in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.

Adobe Fireworks CS5:
Adobe Fireworks CS5 focuses on performance, speed, and web design.

To get us started this video quickly wraps up most of the new features of Adobe Fireworks CS5.

In addition to better performance, Fireworks CS5 heavily focuses on web design. Adobe emphasizes it’s ability to produce websites. They make it clear on their Fireworks CS5 home page that you can export CSS layouts for completion to Dreamweaver CS5, and “quickly create wireframe websites from Fireworks templates.” Click the link below for more info:
http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/

Adobe Flash CS5:
Adobe Flash CS5 concentrates on having more control over everything. From a new text engine, to wide content distribution, to iPhone app support, Adobe Flash CS5 has it all.

To start with, Flash CS5 improved many things that Flash CS4 had. Adobe enhanced the “ActionScript editor”, “Creative Suite integration”, “video improvements”, and “wide content distribution”.
In addition to the improvements, Adobe also added a lot of new features.

Text Engine:
Adobe Flash CS5 has a great new way of managing your text. It gives you great flexibility and power over the text used in your flash document. CLICK HERE then click the arrow before “text engine” to view a demo video made by Adobe.

Deco drawing tools:
Add advanced animation effects with a new comprehensive set of brushes for the Deco tool.

iPhone App Integration:
Possibly the most important new feature in Flash CS5 is the ability to easily make iPhone Applications. This came as a surprise to many because Apple and Adobe hate each other, but let’s not question it and just be thankful that Adobe added this to Flash CS5. Here’s a great video showing a demo/tutorial of this new feature:

Adobe Illustrator CS5:
Adobe went all out with Illustrator CS5. They introduced many new tools like “beautiful strokes”, “bristle brush”, and the “shape builder tool”. In addition to all the new tools, they introduced drawing enhancements like “perspective drawing” (which is probably the biggest addition to Illustrator CS5.)

Here’s a video covering the top 5 new features of Illustrator CS5. The video also shows each feature as it is talked about so you can see it in action.

Visit the link below for more.
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/whatsnew/

Adobe Photoshop CS5:
And finally, my FAVORITE program, Adobe Photoshop! Adobe really went all out with Photoshop CS5, and I LOVE IT!
They improved things like the media management, the performance, the workflow, the image processing, and the superior HDR imaging. They also added new, mouthwatering, features like “complex selections made easy”, “content aware fill”, and “puppet warp”.

This video shows the top 5 new features of Photoshop CS5.

This video also shows a couple cool features of Photoshop CS5.

Adobe CS5 Video:

How To Make Your First Website In 10 Easy Steps

octogfx — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:31:19 +0000

There are many different techniques to making a website. You can choose different services like WordPress, Blogger, and Joomla. Or you can choose from different websites like Webs, Wix, and Weebly, that give you all the tools to make your own website using their website. Or you can choose to make your website by hand, the old fashioned way, and (in my opinion) the best way. Today we are going to be taking a look at making a simple website using Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a professional (and very expensive program) but you can always download the 30-day trial for free (visit adobe.com to download.) We will also be using Adobe Photoshop for some minor designing for the website. Photoshop is also a professional (and very expensive) program, but you can download the 30-day trial for free from adobe.com. Also, keep in mind this is a “beginners” tutorial, which is why I titled it “How To Make Your First Website Using Adobe Dreamweaver”, so I will be covering the basics, and nothing more. This tutorial will be teaching you how to make a static .html page for your website. The tutorial is going to be typed, but if you prefer a video version, just scroll down to the end of this post. And with all that being said, let’s get started!

Step 1:
Make a new folder for your website. Name it (your website).com. In the website folder, make an images folder (name it images), and put any images you want to use in your website in that images folder.

Step 2:
Open Adobe Dreamweaver. Click Site>New Site. And fill in all the info for your website. Keep all recommended options selected. And when it asks you where on your computer you want to store your files, make sure to select the folder you made in step one. Press done when you are done.

Step 3:
Click on File>New. Do not mess with any of the settings, and just press create.

Step 4:
Now for the fun part. Switch to design view if you are not there already. And we are going to mess with some of the minor settings first. The first thing I’m going to change is my website title. The title is at the top, and to change it just simply type something in. This shows when you open a new tab in a web browser.

Step 5:
Next, right click in the white area and click Page Properties. Th white area represents your website. When you are in design view, you can actually see what your website is going to look like before you save it. When the page properties panel opens, change the settings to your liking. The images below will show you the settings I chose. I also used Adobe Photoshop to make a simple blue gradient (#006a8e to #007da6) that I will be using for my background. This blue gradient is located in my images folder in my website folder. Make sure to keep all files associated with your website in your website folder.

Step 6:
Now that the settings are to your liking, let’s get started on adding the content. We are going to need to enter into layout mode to make things easier for us. So click on View>Table Mode>Layout Mode. Now that we are in layout mode, make sure you have the insert menu open. You can open it by clicking on “insert” at the top. Once that is open click on the layout tab.

Step 7:
In the layout tab, choose the draw layout table tool. With the draw layout table tool selected, draw a square in the big area under the toolbar. This big area represents your website. When you are in design view, you can actually see what your website is going to look like before you save it. The square does not need to be an appropriate size because you can just change the size to your liking. To change the size to your liking, make sure the properties tab is open. To open the properties tab, click on “properties” at the bottom of the program. Then change the width and the height to your liking.

Step 8:
Now we need to use another tool in the layout tab. Click on the draw layout cell button. Then, draw another box within the bigger box you made using the draw layout table tool. These smaller boxes will represent areas for content. You can adjust the width and height of the smaller boxes the same way you adjusted the width and height of the bigger box. You can also move the smaller boxes anywhere in the bigger box, just by clicking and dragging. I made one for a logo, a navigation bar, the main content, advertisements, and the copyright text.

Step 9:
These smaller boxes allow us to put in any content we want. We can click in these smaller boxes to type text, insert an image, insert a video, etc. So now we can just add all the content with ease. To type something, just click in the smaller box, and start typing. To add an image, click in the smaller box, then click on Insert>Image (make sure your image is in the images folder in your website folder). To add a video/audio, click in the smaller box, then click on the common tab, then click on the media button (next to images button), select plugin, then select the video/audio clip (make sure it is in your website folder.) To link something, highlight it, then head over to the properties tab, and type in a link for it.

Step 10:
Save your website. Click on File>Save As, then save it in your website folder. If it is the homepage, name it index. To view your website, go into your website folder and double click on the index file, and it will open in your preferred web browser. If you need to change something, just head back into Dreamweaver, make any changes you want, and save it to preview it again.

How Not To Run A Blog

octogfx — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:35:13 +0000

This post goes out to all bloggers, not just graphic designers. Don’t ever do anything like what I’m doing right now. I promised 1 “Inspiration of the Day” every weekday, and 1 bigger/better post every weekend, and obviously this isn’t a bigger/better post. My schedule got mixed up and I had no time to post a good post this week. So let’s learn from this mistake.

ALWAYS plan ahead of time.

ALWAYS keep your promises.

ALWAYS be consistent.

NEVER promise something that you can’t do.

NEVER put yourself in a situation that you won’t be able to provide what you promise.

NEVER leave your viewers with nothing to read/see.

Learn from this, and don’t let this happen to you. I promise that it won’t happen again.

10 Amazing Graphic Designing Websites

octogfx — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:42:28 +0000

I know what you are probably thinking. “Why would OctoGFX.com be promoting other graphic designing websites? Aren’t they it’s competition? Is it for money? Or maybe for a shout out?” If that’s what you are thinking, then you are completely wrong. Well it is true, they are my “competition”, but no, I’m not getting paid for this, and no they are not giving me a “shout out” in return for this. OctoGFX.com prides itself on being a great website for graphic designers, but although this is a great website, we can’t always provide you with what you want. You might need more inspiration, or you might be looking for a tutorial that we don’t have, and what kind of graphic designing website would we be if we just leave you hanging like that? The next step for you would probably be to spend endless hours searching for what you are looking for. And you know how we just love to help you guys out and make things easier for you, so today, we are providing you guys with 10 amazing graphic designing websites, just in case you can’t find what you need on OctoGFX.com (which is very unlikely ;P). Full list after jump.

1. Hongkiat.com
A privately owned graphic designers blog. Updates daily.

2. Abduzeedo.com
One of the more popular graphic designing blog. Updates daily.

3. Richworks.in
A great graphic designing website. Covers many different niche’s.

4. GraphicDesignBlender.com
A fairly new graphic designing blog, but shows a lot of promise.

5. PSDTuts.com
An amazing website for Photoshop tutorials.

6. PSDeluxe.com
Great graphic designing blog. Also provides memberships for extra features.

7. HV-Designs.co.uk
Covers graphic design, and coding. Full of tutorials.

8. Grafpedia.com
Great tutorials. VIP section for more features/downloads.

9. Tutorial9.net
Full of Photoshop and photography tutorials.

10. TutCandy.com
Filled with great professional tutorials.

15 Amazing Free WordPress Theme Websites

octogfx — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 20:13:38 +0000

Imagine websites without WordPress. Where would we be? Us bloggers would be nobodies, and the web would not be used to it’s fullest potential. WordPress is definitely one of the best things on the internet. Hundreds of thousands of websites on the web are made with WordPress, and even some big names like Yahoo and CNN use WordPress. Now as much as I agree that WordPress is awesome, I also agree that WordPress would be nothing without WordPress themes. Most WordPress themes provide you with a nice design, a good user interface, and a lot of flexibility. And quite frankly, WordPress on its own can not do that with it’s default theme. And because of that there are thousands of websites dedicated to providing you with WordPress themes. This might sound like a good thing at first, but it can also be a pretty big hassle. It’s obviously good because there is so much variety that you can choose from, but it’s also bad because you do not know which one to choose. In fact, a quick Google search for “WordPress Themes” gives you 32,400,000 results, and the results are increasing by the minute! So if you were to try to choose one WordPress theme from 30 million+ websites, it would take you forever and you would waste a lot of your time. So to make things a little easier on you guys, I put together a post of 15 amazing websites that provide you with FREE WordPress themes. Full list after jump.

1. WordPress – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
1000+ Free Themes – Official WordPress website

2. WPskins – http://www.wpskins.org/
Very Popular – Updated with new themes

3. Theme Lab – http://www.themelab.com/free-wordpress-themes/
Both free and premium themes available

4. Fresheezy – http://www.fresheezy.com/
Professionally run by the “eezy” network

5. SkinPress – http://www.skinpress.com/
Both free and premium themes available – Themes for WordPress and more

6. FreeWPThemes – http://www.freewpthemes.net/
Tons of free WordPress themes – Run professionally by the makers of FreeCSSTemplates.org

7. ThemeSplice – http://www.themesplice.com/
Lots of themes – Categories make navigation and choosing a theme easier

8. TopWPThemes – http://topwpthemes.com/
One of the better known free WordPress theme websites

9. WordPressThemesBase – http://wordpressthemesbase.com/
Categories and 5 star rating system make picking a theme easy

10. FreeThemeLayouts – http://www.freethemelayouts.com/
“World’s Largest Collection of Premium Free WordPress Themes!”

11. WPThemesPack – http://www.wpthemespack.com/
Good Themes – Theme Categories, Theme Properties, and Top 30 make it easy to find the theme you want

12. NewWPThemes – http://newwpthemes.com/
Impressive website layout – Very Professional – Easy to find a good theme

13. WooThemes – http://www.woothemes.com/themes/free/
Very few free themes, but the free themes are premium quality

14. WordPressThemes2 – http://www.wordpressthemes2.com/
Great website – Categories and popular section make it easy to find a good theme

15. Web2Feel – http://www.web2feel.com/
Great free themes – Website also provides wordpress help and tips