Profile Pimp is a one stop profile customization site where you can pimp your profile, and they’ve taken on MySpace. Their MySpace profile customization comes in two flavors, Premade MySpace Layouts and MySpace Layout Generator. Their premade layouts are simple copy-and-paste layouts, so that should work for most of us. But if you want to have more control on how you customize your profile you can try their layout generator, where you can specify your own colors, background image, and so on.

So don’t blend with the crowd, check them out and make your profile stand out!

BrowserShots is a great and easy way to test your site in different browsers without having to load the individual browsers themselves. This makes a good shortcut for site creators to make sure their site will work in every browser without a glitch.

Ther mission statement:

In our dreams, the web looks good for all users. So we let web designers view screenshots of their pages in different browsers, at different screen resolutions and with different plugins. We’re trying to make this service easy to use, open for all (including access to the source code) and 100% free, as in free beer.

Yes free is great but as most free online tools they’re usually overloaded fully utilized so sometimes it takes a few tries before you can actually make use of it. Still it’s a great service and it’s really worth supporting.

Via Ades Blog.

CreateBlog has close to 900 FREE MySpace Layouts you can use to change the look of your MySpace Profile. They have a very nice intuitive user interface to help you browse through their extensive list of beautiful layouts. When you click on a desired layout you are presented with a preview and the code you can copy-and-paste into your About Me section. It doesn’t get easier than this, so check them out.

Liz over at Successful and Outstanding Bloggers talks about 9 + 1 Things Every Reader Wants from a Writer which can help all of us understand our readers better.

It can seem complicated to write for a readership that includes beginners to experts. I’ve done it for almost three decades. It can seem like there’s too much to consider to meet them all at their own level.

Yet my experience is that beginners and experts are not that differernt when they read. They might choose to read different things, but we all do. Beyond that difference of content, beginners, experts and those of us in the middle — every reader — wants the same things from a writer.

Her breakdown on these ten things include picking an idea that intrigues you, tracing out a simple structure, writing for someone who’s like you but doesn’t know what you know about the topic, making clear decisions about what to include, setting aside your expensive vocabulary, and so on.

This is really worth reading if you want to improve your readership and if you care about repeat visits and readers satisfaction.

Via ProBlogger.

Web page design (and of course, blog design) pricing is a controversy these days. You’ll find a full range of spectrum on initial quoting, from ridiculously cheap $50 designs to ridiculously expensive professional $250 an hour design services. The question is what and who to choose to take on your project, and what are the standards?

To answer this question The Blog Studio elaborated on Chris Pearson’s original post on the matter.

Pricing is a hot topic in web design, especially at the small to medium end of the spectrum that most designers and clients occupy. At issue is the fact that there are no standards: no standard industry rate, no standard industry process. No standard industry anything.

Shopping for a designer must be incredibly frustrating. Asking “how much to design my blog” will return quotes ranging from the insanely low to the absurdly high. Why? There are a number of reasons, a few of which I’ll review here.

First, we’ve got to separate providers of web sites into three groups: professional design/develop agencies, professional design/develop freelancers, and amateurs. Generally speaking, agencies will charge more per hour than freelancers, and freelancers more than amateurs.

There’s a lot of truth to what they have to say (follow the link above to read the entire article) but we’re sticking to our own standard despite the controversy, which we believe reflect our quality of services while saving our clients from burning holes in their pockets.

At the end of the day it’s your decision who you want to hire, so a little research and shopping around never hurts!

Apple has launched iPhoto 6.0.4. According to Apple:

This update to iPhoto contains a variety of new Greeting Card and Postcard themes for use with Apple print services, including invite and thank you card designs for summer parties, weddings, birthdays, etc.

So what are you wating for? Download this software now! Via Apple.

So, what’s new from Microsoft? They finally released the new MSN version and it’s out of beta stage. It’s loaded with a bunch of new features and it’s now called Windows Live Messenger. You can download it here. Via Coolest Gadgets.

Google has added a Web Albums feature to its free photo editor, Picasa. Web Albums includes 250 MB of photo storage and is upgradeable to 6 GB of storage for $25 a year. Compared with Flickr, it only offers 20MB on its free account and unlimited storage for $25 a year. Download Picassa Web Album here.
Via Forever Geek.

Downloading, editing and uploading a free website template isn’t rocket science, but most people don’t know how to do more advanced things like creating forms, and getting them to work/function properly. Former Assembly is a place where you can create forms with simple drag and drop. It has a ton of public domain forms you can use, and form templates you can use to build custom forms with your own design, etc. Make your form-making a breeze, go check them out.

Via Ades Blog.