Pengin, Panda and Pirate - Great blog article about google's SEO algorithms

A really interesting article by Glen Gabe (twitter.com/glenngabe) on the Moz Blog about Google's SEO algorithms.

http://moz.com/blog/the-danger-of-crossing-algorithms-panda-update-during-penguin-3

re-post: 15 Web Apps That Top Web Designers Are Using

re-post from Design Mag, will be working my way through these...
http://designm.ag/design/15-web-apps-that-top-web-designers-are-using/
There's a great piece that DesignMag have just posted, really useful tools, most of which I haven't heard of to will be investigating further. I've just blatently copied the titles out with the links in so I have them for future reference...

Invoicing and Financial Apps

Nutcache

Pulse

Apptivo

Wireframing and prototyping tools

Proto.io

PowerMockup

Collaboration and project management tools

Freedcamp

Comindware Project

Time Management

Toggl

Timeneye

Email Marketing

Mailigen

Sendloop

Form builders

Gravity Forms

Typeform

File sharing

Onehub

SugarSync

Style Guides & Pattern Libraries

Just a collection of links and useful articles for creating style guides or as they are becoming more well known pattern libraries:

• http://alistapart.com/article/creating-style-guides 
• http://patterns.alistapart.com/  
• http://kaleistyleguide.com/  
• http://guidelines.usability.gov/  
• http://livingstyleguide.org/  
• http://rizzo.lonelyplanet.com/styleguide/ui-components/cards  
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/09/13/create-pattern-library-with-evernote-fireworks/   
• http://ux.mailchimp.com/patterns  
• http://patternlab.io/ https://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/about/  
• http://responsivedesign.is/resources/frameworks/pattern-lab

Pre-loaders - ...loading

Great set of flat preloaders.
http://pixelbuddha.net/freebie/flat-preloaders

Fonts tool

I just seem to be posting all the great tools I've discovered recently, but this just means the blog is full of great reference material. No bad thing?
http://cssfontstack.com/

Responsive Social buttons

Great responsive social buttons from Kurt Noble Labs
http://kurtnoble.com/labs/rrssb/

CSS Magic

A fantastic site with loads of CSS magic explained really well, great job Adam Schwartz
http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/

Responsive HTML email marketing - a great new tool from Zurb called Ink

The guys at Zurb have come up with a peachy little package called "Ink", for creating responsive HTML emails, ready for you to use with an Email Service Provider of your choice.

Its called INK  - http://zurb.com/ink/

Cracking!

20 useful resources for web designers, thanks to Inspirationfeed.com

Thanks to Inspiriationfeed.com
/http://inspirationfeed.com/freebies/20-fresh-tools-and-resources-for-web-designers/


I've just picked a few below that I will use:

Flat UI Colors

Flat UI Colors is a really simple tool. If you’re looking for a color to use for your design, check out their color palette to find one that suits you. To copy the color’s hex code, all you need to do is click on the color.
Website: Flatuicolors.com

Unheap

jQuery plugins can be really useful as they can add functionality to your site and don’t take a long time to implement. There are tons of jQuery plugins out there and it’s hard to keep track of them all. Unheap has a large selection of jQuery plugins to choose from. The website is neatly organized and categorized so you can find the perfect plugin.
Website: Unheap.com

PlaceIt

If you’re a web designer doing mockups, sometimes its helpful to have images of your website displaying on a device. It can be tricky to PhotoShop these images yourself and an even bigger pain to take these photos manually. PlaceIt allows you to add a screenshot of your website to an image with a device in it easily.
Website: Placeit.breezi.com

Mincss

It can be frustrating trying to figure out which parts of your CSS you’re actually using. If you’re not using it and don’t plan on using it, why keep it? Mincss removes the sections of your CSS that you never use.
Website: Peterbe.com/plog/mincss
As you can see, there are tools to help with every aspect of web design. You can use tools to choose colors, to get inspired, or even to clean up your code. Without a doubt you will save valuable time by using these tools, so give them a try!

Free Intranet Persona Template - (pdf format)

A really useful, free persona template. (PDF format)

A bit of background
We wanted to help our clients to create some excellent user experiences and engage with their staff on their new Interact intranet, so I set about putting a great staff persona template together.

Realised that it might be quite useful to share our template with you, so that you can benefit from creating brilliant personas too, which in turn will help you create great user experiences.

Download the Persona Template PDF

What is a persona?
Personas are realistic but fictional user profiles for an intranet or website. The profiles represent a broad range of needs of groups of users, in terms of their goals and personal characteristics. The personas act as ‘stand-ins’ for real users and help guide decisions about functionality and design.

Personas identify the user motivations, expectations and goals responsible for driving online behaviour, and bring the artificial users to life by giving them names, personalities and even a photo.

When specifying any structure, features, functionality or new processes every team member can use the personas to work out the advantages and disadvantages any new item will have on each user. This in turn naturally leads to better user interface design. With everyone using the same baseline, it makes planning more straight forward and efficient.

Although personas are fictitious, they are based on knowledge of real users. User research should be conducted to create each one, which ensures they represent end users rather than the opinion of the person writing the personas.

The persona template
I’ve made it simple for you, just print out the persona template and follow the light grey text for guidance. Overwrite the grey text with responses to the questions and you’ll end up with a great persona ready to use for your next planning meeting.

Use FitVids for video embedding

HTML5 Video Embedding

HTML5 has simplified video embedding, but designers still have two problems. The first is getting video to resize responsively, the second is to ensure resizing degrades gracefully for Flash when HTML5 embedding isn't supported. Enter FitVids, a jQuery plugin that takes care of all that for you.

Thanks to the guys at Creative Bloq -  http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/tips-812580