I rarely get as excited by a Web 2.0 app or service as I am by ProofHQ, which is an innovative and platform-independent way to manage the whole review and approval process for creative documents. At least for me, the most tedious part of the design process is getting feedback and approval. First you have to make sure the file is in a format that a client or collaborator can read (so that you don't accidentally send out a Word 2007 document to someone who is using Office 2003 and doesn't have the Office 2007 viewer software), then if you are sending something by e-mail, that the e-mail size isn't too large for their mail server. That process has to be repeated for every change or for every new element.

ProofHQ was designed to streamline the entire creative review process, making much of the above process unnecessary.This is how it works: You upload your proof, document or design concept to ProofHQ and enter in who you want to send the proof to. ProofHQ then creates a web-optimized, Flash-based proof that your reviewers or collaborators can view. They just click on a link in their e-mail and have access to the proof or document.

From there, they can add notes, draw in markup and immediately reject or approve a design. You can even embed a "Miniproof" in a blog or wiki, and any comments made either at that site or via the ProofHQ dashboard appear alongside one another. This makes it really, really easy to get feedback and collaboration from lots of different people. As the document creator, you can see who has reviewed or commented on a proof and instantly eyeball if something is approved or if you need to bug someone to give you an answer.

Although I don't read Japanese, I know how to use Google Translator well enough to tell you about this awesome photo effect at Wanokoto Labs. There are plenty of tutorials out there about how to create an "old photo" effect in Photoshop, but this site does it for you in one step.

The effect basically seems to desaturate the image, add some grain, and smudge it up. This results in something like an old newspaper photo. In case you have trouble with the Japanese -- and you probably won't, the layout is pretty intuitive -- the upload feature is the blue tab on the left, and the URL feature is on the right. To activate, click the button below the address of your photo.

UPDATE: Hey, look at that. Once again, the readers are way sharper than I am. There's an English button in the corner. I'm not sure how I missed that, but thanks to John and Chris for pointing it out.

Google has stopped accepting new users for Google Page Creator, the company's online web site creation tool. Current users can continue using Google Pages, but the company wants new users to sign up for Google Sites instead.

Google Sites is a web site/wiki creator that Google launched a year after purchasing Jotspot. Sites allows you to create editable pages, embed videos, calendars, and documents. Later this year, Google will transition all web sites made with the Google Page Creator over to Google Sites.

Google Page Creator was never as easy to use as it should have been and I honestly don't know too many people who used it to build web pages. So I don't expect many people to cry over its loss. But there is at least one potential problem. If anyone's ever posted a link to your files at yourname.googlepages.com, that link could break later this year, because Google Sits uses a different URL structure. Hopefully Google will offer existing users the chance to transition to the new service while keeping their existing URLs.

[via Digital Inspiration]

If your site uses thumbnail images, but you're still opening a separate tab or a separate window to show the larger version, you need to see this: FancyZoom is a little bit of Javascript used by Cabel Sasser on both his personal site and the Panic website, to zoom images inline. Cabel describes the effect as "Mac-like," which is about as accurate a description as you can get. It feels like it should be part of Safari, but it works just fine in other browsers, too.

FancyZoom is a more compact alternative to other zooming effects you might be familiar with, like Lightbox or That Thing Apple Uses on Apple.com. It can be added to a site using only 2 lines of HTML, and it doesn't require any additional libraries. You can also use FancyZoom on a text link to an image, instead of a thumbnail, which could definitely come in handy for some blog layouts we've seen.

[via JoshSpear]

We love free fonts, but sometimes the process of finding half-decent ones can be pretty annoying. Fontspace.com tries to smooth out the rough spots for free font junkies.

Instead of simply categorizing fonts, Fontspace uses the good ol' tagging system - which provides easier access to similar fonts. The broad categories on some other sites (sorry DaFont) often lead to large, tiresome lists that require a boatload of time to sift through.

Registered users can also add fonts to their favorites ; thi can be extremely useful in the event that someone - your husband , for example - accidentally forgets to back up your fonts before a reformat.

Have you ever looked in a real DIYers toolbox? Or maybe even the toolbox of someone who's pretty handy, but who has a messy streak? So all the hammers might be together, or all the screwdrivers will be together, maybe even with some sort of arrangement as to Phillips or Torx heads... but there is almost inevitably, in some corner compartment of the toolbox, or some drawer (and maybe several of them, even) an area set aside for what amounts to a whole lot of miscellaneous "everything" bits. These pieces might logically be found with hammers, or dry wall tools, or about a million other things... But they aren't quite the same, and they aren't always used in the same manner. So they end up in a big pile, that you hope stays manageable enough you can find them again.

This week's Linux switch, the last of the web development stuff for a bit, is like that compartment. These are all nifty little tools, and great when you need them. But they are mostly small, and have a strange distinction of not always being associated with any one particular type of task.

Some, like FTP programs and plugins, are associated with other programs. But what if you love your editor and hate the uploading functions it has? Image maps can be a nuisance to set up, and we think that's probably part of the reason why you don't see a lot of them. But sometimes, they just fit the project at hand.

And you know how we said we'd go easy on the editors? Seriously, we meant it. However, there's one more editing tool we want to mention that's probably beyond most casual users, but will make Linux users who want to develop SWF9 applications pretty happy. We are not covering it in any great depth, because we are not any sort of whizzes with Flash development -- but we have to point it out. It's been a long time coming!

So welcome to our odds and ends compartment of web tools!

IrfanView is a light-weight, but powerful Windows tool for viewing and editing pictures. Version 4.20 is out, and it has a slightly new design, a bunch of bug fixes, and some new features.

At its heart, IrfanView is an image viewer with some editing functions thrown in for good measure. Nobody will mistake it for PhotoShop anytime soon. But you'd be surprised just how much you can do with this free utility.

First of all, IrfanView can handle pretty much any image file type you throw at it. But second, it includes a ton of basic options for editing images, including cropping, resizing, rotating, and applying effects like sharpen, blur, and red eye reduction. Version 4.20 includes a ton of updates, including improved relative zoom, an "auto crop borders" feature which removes outside lines of the same color, and a shiny new icon set.

A lot of desktop word processing and text editing apps feature templates you can use to jazz up your documents -- or make them look terrible, depending on your opinion. Now Google Docs gives you the same option, with a new template gallery. There are over 300 templates, featuring everything from resumés to cards to calendars.

The selection of different templates is impressively versatile. Expense reports, presentations, invitations -- it's all there. Styles range from minimal (basic blue bars) to ostentatious (robots!). Something that immediately struck us as clever is the selection the Avery Dennison-sponsored themes, so you can print to those Avery labels and business cards that every office seems to be up to its ears in. If you use templates in your desktop writing app of choice, you'll probably also find a use for them in Google docs. Although the designs are hit or miss, there are enough of them that you should be able to find what you're looking for.

[via Lifehacker]

If you're a web designer or someone that deals with audio or video, you know how important having the right sound effect is to your production. Sound effects should be given the same amount of thought and care as the other parts of your project. But if you're not in the business of sound, where do you go? You go to soundsnap.

Soundsnap is all about high quality, member created sound effects. With effects ranging from animals to transportation, you're bound to find something that will complement your own creation.

Using soundsnap is easy, either type in a search term or browse via the categories on the front page. Soundsnap also lets you audition the files prior to downloading. Sound effects are available in either mp3, wav or aiff audio formats to fit your production needs.

According to soundsnap, most of the members creating sound effects are either industry professionals or hobbyist. This may explain why we found most of the samples of high quality.

So if you're looking for that effect that will put your production ahead of the rest you may want to check out soundsnap.

If you ever wanted to make a tiled background pattern for your desktop or website but lacked the design expertise to create one, bgpatterns has you covered.

The site is very straight forward and easy to use. Start off by selecting the foreground and background color for your design, followed by the texture of your canvas. Once you have that dialed in you're ready for the next step which is selecting the image you want tiled.

After you've selected your image click the "apply background" link and the site's background will change so you can see if you like your design. If you're satisfied with the results you're free to download it or save it to your "My patterns" account.

While bgpatterns offers a number of stock images, it does lacks the option to upload your own custom image. Hopefully the developers will add this option in the future as the selection of images are rather "clip artish".

So if you've been looking at making a skull themed background for your MySpace page bgpatterns is ready for you!

Seriously guys, we love you. Okay, fine, maybe not in the way your mom loves you, or your dog loves you, or your significant other loves you. But we definitely love you in that totally uncomfortable, care-free, "Hey, let us buy you a Red Bull and Pop Rocks next time we're at the convenience store" sort of way.

We don't just love you for your looks, or your superior intelligence, or because you can totally creep out little kids with that thing you do with your left eye. We will even go so far as to say the fact that you use Linux doesn't play into it one bit.

We love you because your suggestions rock. We scour the web ourselves daily, but you know, it's a big place, and we just can't know every single bit of software or tech goodness out there. We think it's way cool when we get suggestions from readers about applications for Linux (or Windows, or Mac, or Palm...) because you aren't only cluing us in on applications we may not be familiar with, but a lot of you are avid users, and can vouch that the application you are suggesting really works for every day use.

This week, we think it's only appropriate to wrap up the editors section of our Linux web tools discussion with a couple of reader suggested gems. So a big thanks to Tim for suggesting we look at Komodo Edit and kingkool68 for pointing us towards Aptana.

Flickr has hundreds of millions of photos, and extensive search functions to help you get to the ones you want. But Flickr users, being acreative, discerning bunch, need even more search types. Searching by color is particularly useful for designers, and Multicolr Search Lab, from Idée Inc., delivers it elegantly.

Multicolr searches over 3 million of Flickr's "interesting" images, delivering results that match the colors you specify. It's fast, returning results almost instantly when we tested it out. It's also powerful, able to match up to 10 colors at once. Multicolr is already a designer's dream. Just add a Creative-Commons-only checkbox, and it would be practically perfect.

[via ReadWriteWeb]