Andy Boyd

I spent about an hour looking for a pre-made 3 faux-column css template and couldn’t find one.. Finally, I found this site.  This is the ultimate css layout repository…  Well, ultimate in my mind:

http://www.code-sucks.com/css%20layouts/ 

Designmeltdown.com posted a group of free scripts/tools to make your website more “web 2.0″.  I don’t really need the scripts for any projects I am currently working on, but it was really entertaining to see what people are doing these days… best of all, they are all free!

http://www.designmeltdown.com/chapters/FreeScripts/

Freelanceswitch.com is a great resource for any aspiring freelancer… They have developed a great little web-app to help you calculate what you should charge for your hourly rate.  Check it out:

http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/

I am a grammar criminal… This is a great reference for grammar and punctuation. Thank you dumblittleman.com!

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2006/12/40-tips-to-improve-your-grammar-and.html

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I’ve been looking for a way to create a “virtual private network” using my Linksys router and Windows XP.  I have been searching for a while to learn how to do this to no avail… but thanks to this itsatechworld.com article…  I am on my way!  Thanks itsatechworld.com!

Ihttp://www.itsatechworld.com/2006/01/29/how-to-configure-openvpn/

Peter Freitag gave me a little SEO little tip I was not aware of…..

http://www.petefreitag.com/item/636.cfm

“Just a quick tip for those of you that are building XML sitemaps for your web sites. You can now add a line to your robots.txt file to include a pointer to your sitemap file, it would look like this:
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

This will allow your sitemap to be picked up by several search engines automatically. I first noticed this about a month ago, not sure how long this feature has been around.”

Thomas Baekdal wrote a fantastic article about understanding design trends  and knowing how to design/act according to the current trend. This article is a must read…

Thomas also offered the following trends to watch for… very insightful!

• Simple vs. Complex
• Colorful vs. low on color
• Visible vs. hidden technology
• Ordinary text/images vs. Rich Media presentations
• Efficiency vs. Exploration
• Manual vs. Automatic
• Big vs. small
• Rounded vs. edgy
• One-page vs. many pages
• No effects vs. fanciness
• Social vs. isolated
• Work vs. fun
• Long vs. short
• Sporty vs. comfortable
• Strong vs. fragile
• Masculine vs. feminine
• Independent vs. company
• Etc.

http://www.baekdal.com/articles/management/design-secret-unveiled/

Ever since we started releasing home-brewed Firefox extensions here at Lifehacker, several readers have asked: How difficult is it to build a Firefox extension? For someone with a bit of programming experience, the answer is not that difficult. Today I’ve got a quick start list of resources for the curious programmers who want to give it a try

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There’s an underground trend thats been going on for quite some time among those who don’t enjoy the usual MySpace layout aesthetic - loud music, tons of animations, layout that’s falling apart and color matching from hell. These folks have gone to great lengths to make their MySpace profiles as different from the “standard” MySpace layout as possible

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Synergy is a really cool application that allows for you to have 1 keyboard and 1 mouse across multiple monitors and computers. This a great write up and tutorial for this awesome app.

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