Stunning vector images at Designious

In a previous post I linked to sites where you can buy and sell vector images. Those sites have big collections of vector images made by many different artists, but this means that the quality of the illustrations are not always the best. But there are also sites dedicated exclusively to vector images made by one person, team, or company. Designious is one such site, and they have a huge selection of beautiful vectors to choose from.

Designious sells dozens of $15 themed packs with many vector images in each one. The categories include Floral, People, Nature, Buildings, Skulls, Scrolls, Halftones & Grunges, Wings, and more. These packs are also available in Mega Packs and Giga Packs, which are great if you want to buy multiple normal packs, because you can get them for half price! They also have dozens of striking T-shirt designs for $10 each.

If you want to try before you buy, you can go to their free downloads page, where you can find free vector packs, T-shirt designs, icons, and some stunning illustrations.

My favorite floral design is "Floral vector pack 19", which is filled with beautiful vines and flowers! Most of them are meant to be used as abstract silhouettes, but you can still color the vines and flowers separately with a little more work. Just copy and paste your image, and remove the part of the drawing you don't need (for example everything except a flower). Repeat until you have separate images for each part you want to give a separate color to.

I have also tried the "Cartoon girls vector pack", which contains 17 vector images of women in different poses, with different hair and clothes, and of different nationalities. My first thought when I saw them was that they would be perfect to use in personal websites and blog designs! I really love using vectors instead of bitmap images, because it's so much easier to change the colors to my liking. I had great fun changing the colors of their hair, skin, clothes, and even their make-up! Try doing that so easily in Photoshop :P

Users who don't have Illustrator might have some problems with the parts of the images that are colored with gradients - I use VectorDesigner, and some of the girls from this pack were missing clothing or hair! :P Luckily I also have ZeusDraw, and was able to get around this problem by importing the EPS file as a PDF, and then converting the PDF to objects. But if you're lucky enough to have Illustrator, you shouldn't have any problems ;)

Browsing through the Designious vector packs has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for new designs, and I can't wait to get started! :D

RSS feed not working

Some of you may have noticed that the Bits and Pixels RSS feed is not working right now. I just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to find the problem, and will get it fixed as soon as possible. I think it might be a problem with the desktop blogging client that I bought recently, and which I used to post the last two posts (which coincidentally are the ones that have not been distributed via feed and email subscriptions). I am writing this post from the WordPress dashboard, so if it shows up in my feed I'll know for sure it's the desktop blogging client's fault ;)

If it doesn't show up in the feed, then I really don't know what's wrong, as I've had the feed validated with no problems. In this case I will have to contact Feedburner to see if they know what's wrong, but hopefully I can get it fixed soon. Thanks for your patience!

Update: Okay, I don't think it's a problem with Ecto anymore. I'm pretty sure now that the problem lies with Feedburner. I have posted in their Google group, since I couldn't find a contact form or email address, but hopefully they will respond soon. Does anyone know how to contact them directly?

Cooliris finally available for Safari!

Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, is finally available again for Safari users! Cooliris is a browser plugin (currently available for Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer) that enables you to browse or search for images and video via a beautiful interface. The results are shown on a 3D wall that you can scroll around on and zoom-in on.

Supported sites include Amazon, YouTube, Flickr, SmugMug, Google, Yahoo, deviantART, Photobucket, Picasa, Facebook, and MySpace. For the full list click here. It is also possible to enable Cooliris on your own website or blog.

I have been waiting a long time for Cooliris to be compatible with the new version of Safari, and now that it has been released I am suitably impressed. The images don't completely load until you click on them, so when you select an image to enlarge it's a bit blurry at first, but the loading time is quite fast - and I have a terrible connection! It also considerably speeds up image browsing and searching, as there's no need to load a new page after every few images, and it only fully loads the images that you are interested in.

To see everything Cooliris can do, just hop over to Cooliris.com, and watch the introductory video. You need to see it in action to fully understand how great it is! ;)

36,000 credits up for grabs!

I'm a sponsor of the EntreBlast Summer Credit Splash contest, so go sign up if you want a chance to win part of the 36,000 credits!

1st Prize - 17,000 ECs
2nd Prize - 10,000 ECs
3rd Prize - 6,000 ECs
4th Prize - 2,000 ECs
5th & 6th Prizes - 500 ECs

Good luck! :D

New direction

Sorry for the lack of updates lately - I've been having some problems with my internet connection.

It made me realize, though, that trying to come up with posts to write all the time is quite stressful, and decreases the fun of having a blog in the first place. I know that everyone says you have to post every day to have a successful blog, but it kind of defeats the object if blogging starts to become a chore.

So I have decided to not stress about it anymore, and just post when I have something interesting or helpful to say. This might mean less posts - although I've always tried to post interesting or helpful things, I won't be actively trying to think them up anymore. So if you don't want to check back often and would rather be notified when I update, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe via email.

Also, I was thinking of focusing a bit more on what this blog was originally going to be for: graphic resources, links, tutorials, downloads etc. for the cheaper Mac graphic programs like Pixelmator, VectorDesigner, ZeusDraw, Drawit, Gimp, and Inkscape.

But I will still post any interesting info I find about blogging, and any other pixelly subjects ;)

Earn $50 for writing just one post!

Did that title get your attention? :P It's true, but there are more reasons to sign up with RevResponse than just the $50. Read on as I tell you about my experience with them.

The offer
I had signed up with RevResponse a long time ago, but I've been so busy lately that I hadn't gotten around to setting up my page (or mini-site) yet. I finally logged into my RevResponse account yesterday to set up my page, and saw that they're offering users $50 in the month of July just to write a post about them! For those of you who don't know what RevResponse is, it's a company that has a wide range of ebooks, whitepapers, software downloads, etc. to offer for free on your site, and you get paid every time someone downloads something.

Help a cause and win a Nintendo Wii or Flip Mino!

The contest & sponsors
Thanks to The University Kid and Market Leverage, you can help raise money for cancer research and win a Nintendo Wii or Flip Mino!

The University Kid is a young entrepreneur blog that I recommend you all check out - it's not one of those "make money online" blogs that try to sell you everything under the sun just to get their cut of the sales. A day or two ago Jason even gave me a tip that would have saved me money and lost him an affiliate sale!

Jason has a straightforward, humorous style of writing that is a pleasure to read, and he's also very helpful. You can also check out his blogging forum, Blog Premiere, and meet a whole lot of great bloggers.

Market Leverage is an affiliate network characterized by their great customer service. The staff is friendly and helpful, with a great sense of humor too! (check out this post)

The cause
Two Market Leverage affiliate managers, Debby Phillips and Jen Fluker, are training for a 60 mile walk to raise money for breast cancer, and have entered the Blogging Idol challenge in an effort to win and collect more money.

How to help
Gaining the most subscribers out of all the Blogging Idol contestants will win them the cash prize, so subscribing to their blog will help and get you entered into the competition. You can also help by spreading the word to help them get more subscribers, by donating money to the cause, or by donating Entrecard credits so they can advertise on more blogs. You could also buy a spot on their Scratchback widget for $5, or display their 125x125 banner on your blog.