Since Gmail doesn’t allow html in it’s signatures normally, you will need the Autopen extension for Google Chrome (note there is an extension for Firefox but this tutorial is for the Google Chrome extension). This addon essentially lets you add a html signature at the end of any Gmail message, with basic inline css support.

After the plugin is installed you can go to your Gmail and click the Autopen editor button.

This will open the editor where you can make signatures for your emails, we are just going to make a simple signature with a image and some text.

Start by creating a table with 2 columns 1 row, and 0 border.

Using this table place a small image on the left, anything that you would find appropriate (a photo of you or something like that). I’ll be using an A just for an example (if you need a place to upload an image for this try imgur.com). When adding an image also add an alt tag so for those who don’t accept your pictures it’s not totally confusing for them.

On the right column of the table you will want to add things such as your name, email, website, or phone number. Also format nicely by making your name stick out a little.

Save your creation and try it out in Gmail, you can pick one of the signatures you make to be the default one that always loads with an email.

You’re done! There are plenty of techniques you can put into an email signature Smashing Magazine had a great post about email signatures where you can look for inspiration.

If you have a cool email signature feel free to show everyone in the comments, or email me!

First we will start off will a sticker looking object (obviously), just create some text (I’m using the Anja Eliane font).

Next add a stroke to it for the border of the sticker.

You will have to rasterize the text then create a new layer and merge the text layer down so you can get a flat version of the graphic.

Now that you have the merged layer you will need to pick what part you want to appear folded over (just do this by using the polygonal lasso).

After you have the part of the sticker selected that you want to flip you will need to right click it and select “layer via cut“. Once you have the cut in a new layer select it again and free transform it to change the height and width to -100% of what they are now, which flips them vertically and horizantally. Once it’s flipped place it where you deleted it so it appears as if it’s folded over.

Next you will need to remove the original black text part, by selecting the layer (ctrl+click on layer thumbnail) and fill the layer with any color you want (I used an off white for mine). I had to do this step a couple of times to fully get the original color of the text out.

Add a quick shadow to the fold and select the layer, once selected go to Layer>Layer Style>Creat Layers, this will make the shadow a layer itself where you can delete the area not on the sticker.

After the shadow looks nice go back to the layer of the fold and select the burn tool, make the range “Highlights” and put the exposure down (to about 4%). Draw a faint line on the fold so it appears to have some lighting effects, and that’s it! you have a nice simple peeling sticker effect.

There are plenty of different things you can try with this, including text, rounded “stickers”, and plenty more. Note that my rounded sticker was textured with this paper texture.

Here’s some inspiration, including Brad Sucks website and the Little Big Planet box.

When starting a new blog these are some of the best plugins for the foundation of your site. I wouldn’t leave home without them!

All in One SEO Pack
Search engine optimization is important for any site, and the All in One SEO Pack takes care of a lot of those needs, plus it lets you customize!

FD Feedburner Plugin
The amount of people viewing your RSS feed is always nice to know, and with this plugin you can easily replace all your RSS links to your Feedburner’s Address. If you don’t use Feedburner, then I would suggest checking it out.

Google XML Sitemaps
Obviously having the worlds largest search engine indexing your site is important, the Google XML Sitemaps can help Google do so. Once you generate a sitemap with this plugin be sure to link it to your site on Google’s webmaster page.

Search Meter
When a user searches your blog and doesn’t find what they are looking for, they most likely will leave your blog. Search Meter is a great tool to see what people search on your site, but most importantly if they find their results. Maybe you have an article people are looking for but it’s just mis-titled, renaming your post could help a lot.

SexyBookmarks
This plugin took me some time to find, but it’s one of the better social bookmarking plugins out there. Sharing is caring, and SexyBookmarks helps with getting users to share your posts. (see example at the bottom of the post :P)

Smart 404

A 404 is annoying for anyone, and Smart 404 helps with the issue somewhat. Lets say someone goes to this url on your blog mysite.com/iphone-story/ but you renamed it, Smart 404 will search your posts and forward the url to the right post (such as mysite.com/correct-iphone-post).

WP-PageNavi
The standard “older posts” and “newer posts” on the bottom of Wordpress pages can be annoying and slow to use. WP-PageNavi speeds up the process for visitors though, by allowing them to click the page number they want to go to. You might want to theme this before adding it to your site.

WP Super Cache
Speed is one of the most important factors for a website, WP Super Cache helps with this greatly by caching pages rather then pulling from the database each time a page is requested.

WPtouch iPhone Theme
It’s always nice to have a mobile version of your site, and WPtouch will take care of everything, making your blog feel like home on any smartphone.

Bonus! (Kinda): Akismet
Wordpress is easily prone to comment spam, and Akismet takes care of all the spam. This plugin is defaultly installed but you have to get an API key from Wordpress to enable it. If you aren’t using this plugin, enable it RIGHT NOW!

What are some plugins that you can’t live without… let us know in the comments!

I’m gonna break this down to a list of samples, at the end of the article is a zip file with all the fonts.

Angelina

ArtBrush

Daniel

Good Dog

HandWerk

Journal

TrashHand

The main styles used in this tutorial are Shadow, Inner Shadow, and Gradient Overlay.

Add a subtle shadow that points down, I used 2px distance, 5px size, and 30% opacity.

After adding a shadow you will need to add a white inner shadow that is 1 pixel in size. Along with a gradient overlay that goes from white to grey.

Here are a few tweaks that I tried.

Inspiration for this style can be found all over but I saw it on FreelanceSwitch. Note that FreelanceSwitch uses “Futura” for their logo font.

First start out by making a new Photoshop document, or just apply this style to your current buttons. Create a rounded box (I used 7px edges) and add some text into it, preferably white text.

Then you’ll need to apply a inner shadow, gradient overlay, and a stroke. Here are the settings I used for each, it’s important to pick similar colors for 2 ends in the gradient.

Using a white inner shadow creates the nice glow effect while the stroke makes it visible. Doing these effect should give you a button looking like this.

Then modify the text, adding a light shadow (I used a 25% shadow with 1 distance and 3 size) and a gradient that’s white with some grey on the bottom.

Modifying the colors, font, gradients, and opacity of all the elements can give you many effect, here are some I tried.

Inspiration for this style of button was from 37signals’ Basecamp page.

They also changed up the now playing screen with a little better graphics. Another new feature added is a “Smart DJ”, very similar to iTunes Genius bar. Basically the Smart DJ feature allows you to automatically make a playlist by putting in an artist you like and it generates a playlist from other bands based on it. Overall a great update, and an even better update if you’re a Zune HD user (if apps take off more, only a few at the moment).

You can download WinDirStat on their offical site here.

New to Twitter? Don’t even know what it is? well then this post is for you. Well lets start with what it is, it’s mainly a way to stay connected with friends through bit sized messages 140 characters long. There are many ways to tell twitter what you’re doing and to see what your friends are doing, including through your phone, desktop apps, and of course the site itself.First you’ll need to sign up ( twitter.com/signup ) if you are not a user of the site yet. Registering only takes a few things, your name, username, emai, and password. You can change any of these at anytime while using the site but I suggest sticking with 1 username.

The reason to stay with 1 username is due to the fact that people often will respond to you. Responding to you requires users to use an @ symbol then your username, and if that name changes a lot of replies will get lost in the transition. Once signed up you will be greeted with the site’s homepage asking “What are you doing?” which is the whole site in 4 words. For example my first “tweet” was “im making a twitter account“, twitter can be used for anything, you could talk about a cool site you found, what your thinking, or anything that’s 140 characters and worth reading. If you signed up hopefully you knew someone on the site before signing up (if not you can follow me :D ) note that you can use Twitter’s find people function also, but I really don’t reccommend it.

The follow button is always under the profile picture, by following someone you will recieve all of their updates on your homepage.  Say someone posts something you like and you want to respond, you can do this by using an @ symbol then their user name (@username) followed by your comment, and they will be notified of the response. If you liked someone’s post you can “ReTweet” it which isn’t a actual feature of the site but it is well know, this is done by saying “RT @username (their original post)” so you include RT, their @username and their original post, basically giving them credit. A lot of these features can be done though programs off of the site, some of these include Tweed Deck, Twhirl, and plenty of others. You can also use Twitter on your phone, by going to device settings. Txting to Twitter (which is 40404) updates your status with whatever you text to it, many of the features on the site can be done though text commands which are found here. That sums up Twitter, there are literally hundreds of sites that use it’s features, but it all comes down to what you’re doing. If you have any questions about twitter just reply to @someguy9 with any questions.