Join the music revolution… I found out about Deezer once again from the dude I work with, who seems to find out about anything cool before I do. Anyway, Deezer is a website and music community started in France, and supports many languages so everyone can enjoy it. Picture Facebook and MySpace, but with a musical twist, and the ability to create playlists, listen to radio, search through thousands of songs, and share music with all your friends in a online community fashion.

Deezer is also built user-friendly, so that you can browse the entire community while listening to your favorite music at the same time using the power of Flash. It’s also fast, which is a huge factor in online streaming media; lets face it, no one ever wants to wait for their content to load. Check out Deezer, and be sure to add me as your friend, simply Search for “Couchart” and add me… enjoy!

I have recently been venturing on my own a bit and accepting some small freelance projects here and there. In my freelance travels I have picked up some useful tools and information that help in everyday freelancing life. If you are like me, you are always on the look out for tips and tricks to make your life easier, so I have made a small list that may do just this for you. Below are resources that have definitely helped me complete projects and make my customers happy. I hope that you haven’t heard of one of these and that I have helped some people out.

Sprites & Web Design

A relatively unused, unknown, and very efficient way of utilizing CSS and images for websites is using the ’sprite effect’. What is the sprite effect? A List Apart describes it quite well, but doesn’t take it to its full potential, you can easily take this method to the next step by combining more images together in different ways. Let me describe in my words what the sprite effect is:

Sprites can be used in relation to websites by combining like images into one optimized file; thus, limiting the file sizes and requests to the web server.

To use the sprite effect, you use CSS to control the ‘background-position’ of the background image you have created from multiple images of different elements of your website. DeviantArt, Apple, and TNvacation, have all adopted the ‘new‘ technique and are some good examples.

Multiple IE

Multiple IE is a cool installer I thought would be great to mention in this article because it’s now an application I can’t go without when testing sites in Internet Explorer. With this program, you are able to install all versions of IE at once, and run them all simultaneously. When the time comes to test your next project, this tool will prove to be a life saver.

PNG Crush

PNG crush is a cool tool a coworker told me about that allows you to reduce the file size of the popular file format .PNG. This will make it much easier and faster for you to utilize the transparency power of the PNG file format.

Monoslideshow

Monoslideshow is a product I recently purchased at work, it’s a Flash slideshow that is fully customizable from a page on their website. A good example of site that currently uses Monoslideshow is www.bearmountain.ca. If you are looking for slideshow software that is very easily customizable and has seemless flash image transitions, then this should be what you need. The only downside of Monoslideshow is they do not provide the FLA file for you to customize or add any code.

Web Development Doc’s

Web Dev Docs is a product that contains all the documents you need to run a small web development business. What’s included in their packages are: 4 Website Design Proposals, 3 Colorful Proposal Flowcharts, Website Design Contract, Website Maintenance Contract, 2 Website Planner Workbooks, 6 Letters to Customers, Project Invoice, Project Estimate, Website Design E-Book Series

You are able to get these documents on CD, or simply sent to you in an email. The cost is about $40, and from the small amount I’ve used them, they have already proven to be worth the money.

Hosting from Mt (Media Temple)

I have finally made the investment of purchasing my own hosting for my websites, after receiving free hosting for so many years. I decided to go with Media Temple, as they seemed to have big name clients, as well as host many of the sites I visit daily. At first glance I thought of there service to be a bit pricey, however it turned out to be a good investment. The Grid Service I signed up for allows you to host up to 100 different sites, and allocate resources to each one of those individual websites. You are also able to create FTP accounts, email accounts, and SSH options with one simple form. Everything in the control panel (which is a pretty version of Plesk) has been made ‘designer friendly’. If you are looking for a re-seller account, I would recommend Media Temple.

Wordpress Admin Themes

I have come across a couple of cool Wordpress administration themes if you happen to get bored of the default one. Unfortunately Smashing Magazine beat me by mentioning both of these themes in one of their recent articles. I will mention them here anyways, because I know my readers like my site better

The first theme is WP Tiger, which can be downloaded here. The second theme I tried to use; however, does not work in the earlier versions of Wordpress. When I installed it, it completely busted up my website. If you run version 2.5+ this should be a great skin for you admin! Check out the Fluency Admin theme here.

Freelance Promotion Techniques

As a freelancer, you may be wondering different ways to get in the game with the ‘big boys’. Why would a company choose you over a well established design firm in their area? How do you get yourself and your skills noticed by your target market? These blog posts explore different ways to gain clients and leads. I have been promoting myself in different ways, and so far the only real effective way of getting clients has been word of mouth. Nothing else.. Let me know if any of these techniques help you out though.

1.) 120 Self Promotion Ideas for Graphic Designers & Freelancers (Free or Almost Free)
2.) 101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

Tutorials

Even the best of the best professional web designers use tutorials. If they say they don’t, then they are stuck up ego designers who think they are too good to mention the words ‘filers’ or ‘tutorials’. I have stumbled upon some cool tutorials that teach techniques that I didn’t know of.

You suck at Photoshop
The you suck at Photoshop video’s on YouTube are the biggest buzz in the design world at the moment. Not only is they guy hilarious, and the video’s well done, but he does actually show some pretty cool ways of using Photoshop.

PSDtuts.
Their are a lot of sites out there right now that brag about the amount of tutorials on their sites, and have tonnes of categories filled with repetitive content. PSDtuts has put a fresh spin on the tutorial website community by offering quality tutorials by authors that spend time to be detailed.

This tutorial will walk you through four (hopefully easy) steps that will explain exactly how to create a brushed metal navigation with fancy button effects applied over it. You will also learn how to create advanced reflections and shading. A lot of the techniques used during this tutorial can be used on a daily basis for future designing.

To let my readers know now, I assume some things about your level of Photoshop knowledge. You will need to be an intermediate Photoshop user with a firm grasp on the interface, its menus, and tools. So with that out of the way, lets begin with the four steps: Read the rest of this entry »

So recently I have been experiencing the movies and games that I have really been excited about for a long time. The first movie that I really wanted to see was Rambo, which came out on the 25th of January. I went to see this movie on opening night, and I have to tell you… this movie kicked ultimate bad-guy ass. It was a gory, bloody, awesome redemption of Rambo 3, which was the only movie of the Rambo series that I didn’t like as much as the others (not that I hated it, it’s just the worst of the four movies).

Written, directed, and starred in by Silvester Stallone, Rambo filled all my expectations of a loud, and bloody hour and a half packed with lots of testosterone and manliness. I recommend this movie to everyone who is a dude between the ages of 1 and 1000. Two thumbs up from Couchart, what else do you need to know?

The next item on my list to enjoy was Call of Duty 4, a first person shooter released by Activision, and Infinity Ward. Now; like Rambo, this game punched my lust for action and great moving pictures right in the kisser. The graphics are amazing, the game-play was even better, and best of all the new features in realm of first-person shooters was taken to a new level. These New features include the ability to upgrade your character and unlock upgrades to your arsenal of weapons. The only thing that brought this game down on the scale of awesomeness was the fact that the single player was kind of short. I was able to beat the game within two days, so I hope to see an expansion with a set of new missions and maps.

Last of all, the movie that I had been waiting for was Cloverfield. I saw this movie while I was visiting my aunt in the United States, and I thought that the approach, and execution from the start of advertising, to the end of the film was great. I was kind of kept in the dark in terms of knowing what the movie was actually about, I had no idea that it was a monster attacking New York. This made my experience of the movie even better. I think they added the perfect blend of humor and drama to make the whole concept believable and enjoyable. This movie gets 4/5 on the Couchart scale of awesomeness. It loses on point on the scale because the Statue of Liberty’s head didn’t look that great in terms of the CGI.

The next set of games and movies I am excited for is Iron Man, Turok:Evolution, Forbidden Kingdom (A movie with both Jackie Chan, and Jet Li), 10,000 BC, Hellboy, The Dark Knight, Medal of Honor: Airborne, and pretty much any new first person shooter for PC.