The Macintosh Operating System has almost always had a built-in Text to Speech converter. One use of the Text to Speech feature is as a screen reader for those whose vision is impaired, but the speech program can also create audiobooks from any text file.

Running a business for yourself means you have to be inventive
and always on the lookout for a new and better way to get things
done. Innovation junkies, take note: the Internet has a lot to
offer. From invoicing to marketing, these are tools that
freelancers need to know about.

There are loads of different types of clients out there and chances are at some point you’ll get to meet all of them. So let’s take a look through some typical clients and see if you recognise a few of your own in there!

Firefox is more than a browser. It’s a toolbox, just waiting to be filled with tools.

In this Pimp Your Firefox series of posts I’ll be sharing 12 truly useful Firefox extensions to suit different breeds of freelancers.

I’ve capped the number at 12 to ensure only the highest quality extensions make the cut. This is for freelancers who want only the best tools to make their working day easier and more productive.

WYSIWYG-editors are often criticized by real coding ninjas for bloated, dirty and not standards-complaint source code they’ve been producing over the last years. However, WYSIWYG-editors have become much better recently. Some of them even produce valid and elegant code.

Safari is an excellent browser for many reasons; its speed, clean aesthetics and ease of use are attractive from the outset. But there are a few extremely attractive and lesser known features that people should be taking advantage of as well.

StylizedWeb shares with you a list of 30 of the best Firefox add-ons, very useful for web designers and developers.

Adobe Acrobat is expensive, but that doesn’t mean you have to live a
life without portable documents. What many people don’t realize is that PDF is a Federal Information Processing Standard, which means the specifications behind the format are widely published.

Numerous developers take advantage of this fact and create programs
that offer effective alternatives to Acrobat. Check out our list of
these programs and take advantage of these tools that are full of some
of the best PDF features and functions.

Seven "truths" about Apple stores, as submitted by an employee. Truth or fiction? You decide.

The vast majority of people don’t really need heavyweight image editing applications like Photoshop or Aperture. Luckily, you can find a lot of great, online applications that’ll do just fine for some simple everyday photo editing tasks. Interestingly enough, although there’s a lot of competition in this space, we constantly see new apps sprouting everywhere. Therefore, we bring you seven apps you may have missed.

If you’re interested in analyzing and optimizing your page layout - here’s some extremely useful tools that you can use to help.

From friends who think I make easy money to my mother who (lovingly) admonishes me to get a real job, everybody seems to have their own idea of what freelancing is all about. Many of these ideas come from misconceptions of the freelancing life, and Wakeuplater has eight of the most popular.

A question I get often is: how do you find such great images through Flickr? Most importantly, how do you find such great images that you can use freely? SkellieWag shows you how to find and use Flickr images in your work.

Again, yes, Apple could give the update to iPod touch users for free just like their iPhone-using brethren, but they'd have to open past accounting periods and restate their financials. 802.11n? Any of this ringing a bell?

WebClip Icons are strictly for iPhone & iPod Touch users, but since they are quite the popular little devices, website owners might want to think about adding a WebClip icon soon. A WebClip icon is the icon that the iPhone/iPod Touch uses if a user adds your site to their (now customizable) homescreen. Learn how to create your WebClip Icon here.

The Adobe Exchange is THE place to find user-contributed add-ons, templates, brushes, symbols, appearances and tutorials for all of Adobe's graphics applications.

It all began with a post at UNEASYsilence titled "Lies, Lies and Adobe Spies" which caught on to the fact that Adobe CS3 apps were calling out to a suspiciously-crafted IP address. As it turns out, the IP in question—192.168.112.2O7.net (note the capital O instead of a zero)—is not an IP at all, but rather a domain owned by statistics-tracking firm Omniture.

Just what is Adobe doing?

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. Adobe offers a bevy of video tutorials for all the CS3 products at the Adobe Video Workshop section. Definitely worth checking out!

A huge collection of print and television ads from around the world, submitted by ad agencies and design firms, and critiqued by users. Look here for some great inspiration.

I don't normally visit DeviantArt, but my wife actually came across this and I couldn't help but watch it a few times. It's a great concept, a great animation and a great contribution by Alan Becker.

A handy new set of features in Mac OS 10.5 that hasn't gotten much attention arrived in Preview.app, that trusty utility that opens images and PDF files.

In Tiger, Preview was mostly a file viewer, but in Leopard, you can edit images, rearrange and merge PDF files, as well as perform batch actions on a set of files.

Read on for more.

Adobe Fireworks is the industry leader for prototyping and rapid web-site building. Some of you may not be aware of this, as you may be using Photoshop for each phase of web-site production. The articles, tutorials, and resources gathered here will convince you of the power of this application.

One of my all-time favorite sites for free (and pay) fonts in the vein of comic books & comic-style ads, etc. They also have a substantial selection of 'balloon art' and 'sound effects' in case you're producing your own web comic, or maybe you just want to jazz up those family photos..

Most fonts at Blambot are available in many different formats - Mac TT, Mac Postscript, PC TT, and recently they also began offering OpenType downloads as well...

Here's the latest free font available, "Fire Fight", as of 1/02/08:

Enjoy browsing - I always do!

Logotypes, stock photos, sounds, fonts, vector, poser & photoshop brushes : you'll all find links for all these stuffs in Bluevertigo.
Very useful for any graphic designer !

The largest collection of logos in vector format. When you need that corporate logo for your next project and you can't wait for the client to get it for you, this is the place to look. The logos are user contributed, and with the exception of American professional sports, you can find just about any logo you need.

Much like its sister-site vecteezy.com, this site offers a huge collection of Photoshop brushes, complete with preview images, free for download.

With Sprout, you can build, publish and manage widgets, mini-sites, banners, mashups and other rich media Web content in three easy steps.

Sprouts can be of any size and any number of pages and can include images, video and audio and components such as slideshows and jukeboxes as well as Web service components such as Twitter, PollDaddy, ChipIn and more.

Where to come for practical business advice. Maybe you’ve already made a range of expensive mistakes. Maybe you are trying to avoid the possibilities. No prob, your-mistakes-are-us.

BoDo is grass-roots-get-down-and-dirty-love-yo-mamma. We’ll talk about serious subjects such as “When to bring in a PITA clause,” “How to keep your clients” and “How to fire a client.” As well as lighter fare like “Working in your undies” and “How to tell when your down time is up.”

When you're trying to find just the right color combination and you only have a base color to start with, try the Color Blender to find some great companion colors.

Is your client insisting on a Word version of your letterhead design? Follow these conversion guidelines to cut down on your pain and maximize your profit.

In what seems to be a never-ending topic on blogs everywhere, here's yet another list of really cool business cards. It's a really long list, so it may take a while to load all the images.

From the legal point of view, Copyright in Web is often considered as the grey area; as such it’s often misunderstood and violated - mostly simply because bloggers don’t know, what laws they have to abide and what issues they have to consider. In fact, copyright myths are common, as well as numerous copyright debates in the Web.

That’s time to put facts straight. In this post we’ve collected the most important facts, articles and resources related to copyright issues, law and blogging. We’ve also put together most useful tools and references you can use dealing with plagiarism.

Ever wondered how to create those popular, but elegant tapered lines? Or just simple lines that go from very thin to tick and back to thin? If you create an Art Brush for this, you’ve really done half the job already. So the good news is, it’s easy and it’s fast. Veerle has a great tutorial to show you how.

If you’re a designer looking for a job—whether of the freelance or permanent variety—then an online portfolio is pretty much mandatory. In many instances, your portfolio will be looked at without you present, without any other information about you, and probably by a person who has never spoken to or seen you in person. If your portfolio has to stand alone in a critical situation like hiring, it’s worth spending some time making sure it’s going to get the job done!

A great design community featuring commentary and tutorials

A small but handy resource for tips & tricks for the Mac and graphics applications. This is one of my personal favorites!

daFont is the first place to look for free fonts. The fonts are organized by category and the download links are clearly indicated.

A huge list of design-related blogs which ping BlogFlux.

A huge list of design-related RSS feeds, complete with links to the sites. I check this one often!

I've used this site for years to check standard envelope sizes and grab templates for them in vector format. They also feature some handy references like a proofreader marks chart.

An analysis of common mistakes in the portfolios of Web designers. This article will help you learn from the mistakes of many other designers out there.

Mozilla has announced the official release of Firefox 3 beta 2, the tenth major developer milestone in the Firefox 3 development timeline. The new beta, which is available for download from Mozilla's web site, includes interface improvements and a lot of extra polish.

ArsTech has the scoop.

If you're a creative director, art director, graphic designer, website designer, photographer or illustrator and you're looking to get your portfolio in front of people hiring creative talent, then FigDig is the place for you.

PDF Hammer is a website that allows you to edit your PDF files online for free. You don't need to install any additional software, you can edit PDF documents right now inside your browser.

I like "free." It's one of my favorite things - especially when it's good free stuff. Check this site out for a few collections of free downloadable vector art. And be sure to check out their collection you can purchase as well - some very cool stuff!

It was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The iPhone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."

That was then.

A panorama is simply a wide-angled view of a physical space. To the photographer a panorama is usually several photographs that are stitched together horizontally to create a seamless picture.

This simple tutorial from Digital Photography Studio will show you how.

In the beginning, there was not light on the web. It was awfully crowded with dancing marquees, tedious frames, unbearable midis and annoying spinning @’s. It was the dark ages of the web. Then refreshing empty spaces, vibrant, high contrast colors, lovely gradients, big text, original gloss shine effect, diagonal lines and of course reflected logos came on our rescue. Everything was shiny and with that great brandnu smell. The Web 2.0 look was born.

But guess what? There are some people getting tired of that.

Learn the tips of grabbing more freelance work by improving your publicity design skills. This great article at FreelanceSwitch is a must-read!

Fireworks Displays are something that evoke a lot of emotion in people as they are not only beautiful and spectacular to watch but they also are often used to celebrate momentous occasions.

Digital Photography School has 10 Great tips on how to photograph fireworks displays.

Icons, icons and more icons. Download 'em now!

"IconBuffet is home to a tasty plethora of free icons. Collect them, download them, trade them with your friends. They’re kinda like baseball cards, only without the steroids. And you can use them on your website."
everything is said :) try it, it's addictive AND useful! (link provide include my referal)

PDF magazines are a great promotional tool used by companies and collectives. They're also great inspiration if you know where to look.

Smashing Magazine has put together an extensive list of great PDF e-zines.

For a high-profile, award-winning app from one of the biggest software companies out there, the out-of-the-box experience for the new Adobe Photoshop Elements is crappy. Really, it’s the worst I’ve seen in ages. So I had to write this post to complain about it, of course.

The repetitive nature of Web site production is certainly not as fun as the initial creative design process. This is especially true on large sites, where most pages share the same look -- navigation bar, copyright, sidebars, and many other page elements remain identical across all of the pages of your site -- so much of the creative process is over. Fortunately, if you use Dreamweaver, a lot of the pain of building and maintaining a Web site can be eliminated by using Dreamweaver's timesaving Template tools.

Talking about Screen Sharing, the reflection of iChat shouldn't be far away from your mind. Actually, the Screen Sharing itself is provided in your Finder. This article will show you where the Screen Sharing app is located, and how to get more out of it.

Find out what you can do with your design skills, long after the design business has left you behind.

A set of Photoshop brushes made up of various light beams and rays of light. It includes beams like those from spotlights, sunlight like you would see coming through branches, lighthouse light beams, sunburst type effects (full circles as well as half and three quarters of the burst), and even some particles to add to your beams of light to make it look like floating dust. These are extremely high resolution, averaging about 2250 pixels in size.

Warning: large download size!

Logo and identity from brands around the world gathered in this website. Find your inspiration or just have a look to recent logos design.

Macworld's home to all things creative for the Mac. Everything from Adobe apps and plugins, to music applications and Web resources can be found on Creative Notes.

It has nothing to do with fonts, but everything to do with fun. It's almost addictive.

Check out Mono's Faces New Year page and download the Faces screensaver.

Update: It appears to only run on Tiger or lower.

FontSpace is an online community of font designers and enthusiasts. All the 8344 free typefaces for you to download, have been hand-categorized for you to use in your graphic design, scrapbooking, or document purposes.

NetNewsWire is arguably the most popular desktop feed reader on the planet. Shawn Blanc has a thorough look at the RSS Reader, including a look at the new version nearing the end of beta testing.

I thought this Graphic Design Rap video was hilarious and worth sharing if you haven't seen it.

A site dedicated to all things Adobe Acrobat and PDF-related.

Fantastic spoonfed Photoshop tutorials

Quick Look is probably one of my favorite new Leopard features. QLPlugins.com has a great collection of plugins allowing you to view Illustrator, Quark and numerous other application files in the Finder, as well as useful others such as the ability to get a view of what's inside installer Package files.

This tool will easily allow you to create RSS buttons or "chicklets" for your blog.

Newsgator's recent announcement that their popular line of cross-platform newsreaders were now free had many of you asking why you would ever give up the web-based bliss of Google Reader for desktop-based readers; still others were wondering why anyone wouldn't ride the desktop wave now that these best-in-class readers have hit the free market. Today we're comparing the most popular web-based newsreader, Google Reader, with the freeware, desktop-based readers from Newsgator. If you think you're running the perfect reader for your needs, take another look—you might be surprised at what you're missing.

A quick tutorial for creating down & dirty rusted metal in Adobe Photoshop.

I noticed this quite by accident the other day while rendering out
an After Effects animation I had done. I had made a spelling change in
one of the graphics, and re-rendered a composition I had rendered the
day before. When it was finished, I noticed in the Render Queue that it
had taken 15 minutes longer to render than it had the day before. This
seemed odd to me, as like I said, all I had done was changed the
spelling of one word in the animation. It turns out that Safari is responsible. Read on for tests and explanation.

Note: This article was written in February of 2006, so obviously it applies to OSX Tiger, and not Leopard.

Sears.com is distributing spyware that tracks all your Internet usage - including banking logins, email, and all other forms of Internet usage - all in the name of "community participation."

Every website visitor that joins the Sears community installs software